"BD  \  b  1 

.YC7  Z. 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


PUBLISHED  ON  THE  FOUNDATION 
ESTABLISHED  IN  MEMORY  OF 
JAMES  WESLEY  COOPER 
OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1865,  YALE  COLLEGE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/whatistruthessayOOroge 


LONDON 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


AN  ESSAY  IN 

THE  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE 


BY 

n/ 

ARTHUR  KENYON  ROGERS 


NEW  HAVEN 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

•  HUMPHREY  MILFORD  •  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MDCCCCXXIII 


COPYRIGHT,  1923,  BY 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


THE  JAMES  WESLEY  COOPER 
MEMORIAL  PUBLICATION  FUND 


The  present  volume  is  the  sixth  work  published  by  the 
Yale  University  Press  on  the  James  Wesley  Cooper  Memo¬ 
rial  Publication  Fund.  This  Foundation  was  established 
March  30,  1918,  by  a  gift  to  Yale  University  from  Mrs. 
Ellen  H.  Cooper  in  memory  of  her  husband,  Rev.  James 
Wesley  Cooper,  D.D.,  who  died  in  New  York  City,  March 
16,  1916.  Dr.  Cooper  was  a  member  of  the  Class  of  1865, 
Yale  College,  and  for  twenty-five  years  pastor  of  the  South 
Congregational  Church  of  New  Britain,  Connecticut.  For 
thirty  years  he  was  a  corporate  member  of  the  American 
Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions  and  from 
1885  until  the  time  of  his  death  was  a  Fellow  of  Yale  Uni¬ 
versity,  serving  on  the  Corporation  as  one  of  the  Successors 
of  the  Original  Trustees. 


CONTENTS 

Belief  and  the  Criterion  of  T ruth  l 

If he  Nature  of  Certainty  29 

If  he  Definition  of  if  ruth  or  “ Tfrueness ”  55 

Knowledge  of  Other  Selves  and  of  the  Past  87 

Some  Competing  theories  100 

Relations  128 

Some  Metaphysical  Implications  159 


PREFACE 


IN  a  volume  published  not  long  ago  and  entitled 
Essays  in  Critical  Realism — a  volume  due  to  the 
collaboration  of  several  writers — there  was  pre¬ 
sented  to  the  philosophical  world  a  somewhat  new 
analysis  of  the  cognitive  experience,  centering  about 
a  conception  to  which,  following  Mr.  Santayana’s 
terminology,  the  name  of  “essence”  was  applied. 
Critics  generally  seem  to  have  found  the  conception 
a  difficult  one,  not  wholly  through  their  own  fault. 
It  was  the  intention  of  the  writers  to  recommend 
primarily  a  certain  empirical  description  of  the 
knowing  experience;  and  having  called  attention,  in 
terms  of  what  knowledge  actually  means  to  the 
knower,  to  one  aspect  in  particular  that  had,  as  they 
thought,  commonly  been  overlooked  or  misinter¬ 
preted,  they  preferred  to  leave  the  matter  here, 
especially  since  they  were  by  no  means  in  agreement 
about  the  next  step.  Their  critics  for  the  most  part 
have  asked  for  something  further,  and  in  the  absence 
of  any  explicit  account  of  the  more  ultimate  philo¬ 
sophical  status  of  the  essence  they  have,  perhaps 
naturally,  found  the  whole  doctrine  obscure.  The 
main  object  of  the  present  volume  is  to  make  an 
attempt  to  supply  this  lack.  Unfortunately  the 
writer  has  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  particular 
interpretation  here  offered  would  find  favor  with 
his  former  colleagues. 


PREFACE 


•  • 

Xll 

I  have,  though  with  numerous  changes,  made  use 
in  the  following  pages  of  several  articles  already 
published  in  the  Philosophical  Review  and  the 
Journal  of  Philosophy. 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION 
OF  TRUTH 


I  SHOULD  like  to  be  able  to  start  off  the  inquiry 
on  which  I  am  embarking  with  a  preliminary 
statement  so  simple  and  self-evident  that  it  could  be 
accepted  by  everyone.  But  since  this  is  not  to  be 
expected  in  philosophy,  I  shall  do  the  next  best 
thing;  I  shall  take  what  is  to  me  the  simplest  and 
most  obvious  proposition  I  can  hit  upon.  My  pre¬ 
liminary  definition  accordingly  will  be  this:  Truth 
for  me  is  what  I  cannot  help  believing.  To  make 
clear  what  I  understand  by  this  will  perhaps  take  a 
little  explaining. 

I  say  that  this  proposition  appears  to  me  almost 
in  the  nature  of  a  truism  so  far  as  it  goes.  Certainly 
that  which  I  do  not  believe  I  cannot  in  any  intel¬ 
ligible  sense  call  true;  this  would  be  to  empty  terms 
of  all  accepted  meaning.  And  indeed  everything  that 
I  really  do  believe  must  for  the  moment  come  under 
the  head  of  what  I  call  the  true.  But  the  words  “can¬ 
not  help  believing”  are  intended  to  limit  the  field 
somewhat;  for  we  are  engaged  on  a  philosophical 
inquiry,  and  what  we  are  after  in  the  end  is  not  any¬ 
thing  that  may  seem  true,  but  what  approves  itself 
as  true  to  the  persistent  inquirer.  If  we  simply  be¬ 
lieved  things,  the  problem  of  truth  would  not  yet 
have  arisen.  It  is  because  we  discover  that  a  number 


2 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


of  things  we  have  believed  do  not  retain  our  belief, 
but  turn  out  false  or  doubtful,  that  we  set  out  to 
hunt  for  some  standard  truth  which  is  really  true. 
My  statement  in  the  first  place  is  intended  to  pre¬ 
suppose  this  situation,  and  to  identify  real  as  dis¬ 
tinct  from  mere  temporary  and  apparent  truth  with 
what  we  persist  in  believing  after  doubt  and  in¬ 
quiry — that  from  which  we  find  ourselves  unable  to 
get  away  no  matter  what  the  sceptical  temptation. 
For  now  suppose  I  find  myself  genuinely  able  to 
doubt  a  pretended  truth — not  simply  to  think  of 
myself  in  imagination  as  doubting  it  under  different 
circumstances ;  can  the  thing  still  belong  to  the  cate¬ 
gory  of  the  true?  Evidently  not;  it  belongs  to  the 
doubtfully  true,  or  that  about  which  I  am  in  doubt 
whether  it  is  true.  It  might  be  claimed  that  I  still 
can  determine  that  it  should  be  held  true  by  me 
through  an  act  of  will.  But  either  this  supposes  that 
the  doubt  still  persists  in  my  mind,  in  which  case  I 
do  not  really  believe  it  true,  but  merely  want  it  to  be 
true,  or  choose  to  act  as  if  I  believed  it  true;  or  else 
by  my  act  of  will  I  succeed  in  forgetting  the  doubt, 
excluding  it  from  my  consciousness.  Then  real  be¬ 
lief  indeed  returns;  but  only  because  I  have  aban¬ 
doned  critical  reflection,  and  have  gone  back  volun¬ 
tarily  to  a  naive  and  prephilosophic  state. 

With  this  preamble,  I  may  go  on  to  point  out 
certain  implications  in  the  thesis,  and  thereby  begin 
to  make  it  more  specific.  In  the  first  place,  it  implies 
that  belief  is  a  more  fundamental  concept  than 


/ 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  3 

truth.  We  need,  in  other  words,  to  start  with  the 

psychological  existence  of  a  certain  peculiar  attitude 

of  mind,  not  with  a  reasoned  definition,  or  with  an 

objectively  valid  standard.  We  experience  the  belief 

before  the  question  of  truth  arises  at  all;  and  we 

have  to  go  back  to  the  fact  of  belief  to  determine 

whether  any  truth  is  left  at  the  end  of  the  inquiry. 

If  it  is  not — supposing  such  an  outcome  humanly 

possible — then  we  are  sceptics,  and  truth  for  us 

does  not  exist.  And  if,  on  the  contrary,  we  still  find 

ourselves  believing,  this  does  not  mean  that  we  have 

discovered  standards  of  truth  which  independently 

produce  the  belief,  but,  rather,  that  the  beliefs  left 

in  the  field  are  what  we  have  to  examine  in  order 

to  find  in  them  the  marks  which  we  then  erect  into  a 

standard.  And  even  if  we  do  not  succeed  in  analvz- 

* 

ing  them  sufficiently  to  elicit  the  standard,  we 
should  still  have  to  hold  that  the  beliefs  represent 
truth.  We  should  be  in  a  hard  case  indeed  if  man¬ 
kind  before  believing  in  truth  had  to  wait  for  the 
philosophers  to  define  its  nature  and  conditions. 

This  leads  to  a  second  point.  When  I  say  that 
truth  is  what  we  cannot  help  believing,  I  do  not 
mean  of  necessity  what  it  is  logically  impossible  not 
to  believe,  or  what  cannot  be  believed  without  self- 
contradiction,  but  what  it  is  naturally,  or  physically, 
or  morally,  or  practically,  impossible  not  to  believe 
after  critical  inquiry.  It  has  been  a  very  general 
assumption  with  philosophers  that  we  have  no  such 
thing  as  truth,  or  knowledge,  until  we  get  what 


4 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


can  meet  this  test  of  logical  certainty;  and  the 
assumption  has  had  unhappy  consequences.  By  set¬ 
ting  up  a  goal  extremely  difficult  to  attain,  if  not 
entirely  out  of  reach,  it  has  tended  to  widen  the  gap 
between  theoretical  and  practical  truth,  and  has 
left  in  philosophy  a  general  impression  of  scepticism 
quite  out  of  relation  to  the  concrete  history  of  the 
growth  of  human  knowledge.  When  we  find  man¬ 
kind  assured  of  the  possession  of  a  great  deal  of 
knowledge  which  the  philosopher  asserts  is  not 
knowledge  at  all,  it  would  seem  more  modest,  as 
well  as  more  fruitful,  if  philosophy  were  to  modify 
its  definition  in  the  direction  of  common  usage,  in¬ 
stead  of  setting  up  an  a  priori  definition  of  its  own, 
and  then  condemning  actual  human  knowledge  be¬ 
cause  it  does  not  measure  up  to  this.  What  accord¬ 
ingly  the  thesis  maintains  is,  that  the  feeling  of 
confidence,  of  settledness  and  assuredness,  when  this 
is  not  dogmatic,  but  is  ready  to  lay  itself  open  to  all 
the  evidence  at  hand,  ought  to  be  taken  in  the  first 
instance  as  the  sign  that  we  are  in  possession  of 
truth.  If  we  actually  have  this,  and  continue  after 
open-minded  criticism  to  have  it,  in  cases  where  the 
logical  test  cannot  be  applied,  that  means  that  we 
have  no  right  at  the  start  to  identify  the  logical  test 
with  knowledge,  and  to  demand  that  it  must  be  met 
before  we  as  philosophers  are  satisfied.  If  as  human 
beings  we  are  satisfied  with  less,  then  philosophy 
must  accept  this  as  a  part  of  its  data.  And  that  men 
are  thus  capable  of  being  satisfied  is  shown  among 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  5 

other  things  by  the  standing  fact,  frequently  a  mat¬ 
ter  of  perplexity  to  the  metaphysician,  that  the  be¬ 
lief  in  an  outer  world,  or  in  the  independent  exist¬ 
ence  of  our  fellows,  or  in  the  obligatoriness  of  moral 
law,  survives  with  hardly  an  effort  the  most  over¬ 
whelming  critical  assaults. 

Another  explanation  is  perhaps  needed  in  connec¬ 
tion  with  the  words  “for  me.”  A  certain  difficulty, 
it  may  be  admitted,  is  present  here,  which  can  hardly 
be  disposed  of  briefly.  But  if  we  are  willing  to  stick 
for  the  time  being  to  words  as  they  are  commonly 
understood,  it  is  not  difficult  to  make  all  the  distinc¬ 
tions  that  are  immediately  relevant.  The  most  direct 
source  of  confusion  is  that  between  “truth  for  me” 
and  actual  or  objective  truth.  That  this  may  stand 
for  a  genuine  distinction,  I  should  be  myself  the  first 
to  claim.  Purely  on  the  ground  of  experience,  it  is 
obvious  that  at  least  I  may  have  at  one  time  a  con¬ 
viction  of  truth  which  afterwards  I  may  lose.  And 
our  common  interpretation  goes  further;  it  makes  a 
difference  not  only  between  the  feeling  of  truth  now 
and  later,  but  between  the  feeling  or  persuasion  of 
truth  and  the  real  truth  now.  It  holds  that  whatever 
my  belief  in  the  matter,  a  thing  is  really  true  or  not 
true  all  the  time;  there  is  an  objective  truth  or 
standard  to  which  the  personal  belief  may  or  may 
not  correspond. 

In  saying,  then,  that  truth  for  me  is  what  I  cannot 
help  believing,  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  truth  in 
the  so-called  objective  sense  is  determined  by  my 


6 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH4? 


psychological  beliefs.  On  the  contrary,  in  every  be¬ 
lief  there  is  present  the  assumption  of  a  validity 
which  does  not  depend  on  the  belief  itself,  but  on 
objective  conditions.  All  that  I  mean  is,  that 
whether  the  belief  is  justified  or  is  a  mistaken  one, 
every  truth  that  we  actually  have  up  must  first  be 
believed  to  be  true  by  some  man  in  particular;  and 
therefore,  for  human  purposes,  it  is  impossible  to 
separate  what  is  really  true  from  what  is  believed 
to  be  really  true,  and  to  get  at  the  former  apart  from 
the  belief.  The  fact  may  be  one  way  or  the  other, 
or  it  may  be  something  quite  different  from  what 
has  ever  entered  into  the  mind  of  man;  but  it  be¬ 
comes  a  matter  of  human  inquiry  and  human  dispute 
only  as  it  is  the  object  of  a  belief.  Reality,  as  it  pre¬ 
sents  a  definite  content  that  we  can  talk  about,  is 
subject  to  all  the  vicissitudes  of  human  thought 
about  reality. 

“Truth  for  me”  means,  therefore,  that  man  can 
attain  to  a  knowledge  of  reality,  not  by  becoming 
himself  identified  with  this  reality,  but  only  through 
belief  about  it;  and  while  belief  always  supposes 
that  it  has  got  at  the  actual  facts,  we  know  that  this 
supposition  is  not  always  correct.  From  such  a 
chance  of  error  we,  as  human  beings,  cannot  possibly 
escape.  No  man,  not  an  absolutist  philosopher  even, 
is  able  to  get  round  the  fact  that  any  statements 
which  he  makes  are  after  all  his  beliefs  about  things; 
they  enter  the  field  of  discussion  as  reality  inter¬ 
preted  by  him,  a  private  individual.  Truth,  in  other 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  7 

words,  is  a  term  that  belongs  primarily  to  the  realm 
of  human  thought  about  reality,  and  had  better  be 
confined  to  this..  When  accordingly  we  mean  to  refer 
to  the  object  of  a  true  belief,  it  will  be  preferable  to 
speak,  not  of  what  I  have  somewhat  loosely  called 
objective  truth,  but  of  objective  reality,  or  fact. 
Objective  truth  means  only  beliefs  that  are  really 
true;  and  since  every  belief  supposes  itself  to  be 
really  true — contains,  that  is,  a  reference  to  reality 
which  it  assumes  that  it  is  adequately  describing — 
from  the  standpoint  of  its  own  inner  intention  at 
least  the  word  “objective”  is  superfluous.  That  the 
belief  sometimes  is  mistaken  is  due  simply  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  man  who  talks  about  truth ;  and  man 
is  not  infallible. 

The  problem  of  the  criterion  of  truth  is,  accord¬ 
ingly,  this:  What,  on  reflection,  justifies  us  in  con¬ 
tinuing  to  hold  to  our  confidence  in  the  things  we  be¬ 
lieve  to  be  true4?  And  the  problem  divides  itself  into 
two  parts:  First,  what  are  the  original  sources  of 
belief4?  And,  second,  what  is  the  test  which  we  apply 
to  strengthen  our  confidence,  and  justify  it  ration¬ 
ally ,  when  for  any  reason  it  shows  signs  of  failing? 

There  are  two  main  forms  of  primitive  or  intui¬ 
tive  belief — by  which  I  mean  belief  that  rests  on  its 
own  bottom,  and  does  not  depend  upon  security 
borrowed  from  other  beliefs.  There  is  on  the  one 
hand  intuition  in  the  stricter  sense,  where  confidence 
seems  to  depend  on  the  immediate  seeing  that  a 
thing  is  self-evidently  so.  This  it  is  apparently  which 


8 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


gives  the  type  of  certainty  in  our  thinking,  and 
which  creates,  perhaps  more  or  less  unconsciously, 
the  philosophic  demand  for  an  infallible  standard. 
I  shall  reserve  for  another  section  the  examination 
of  intuition  in  this  narrow  meaning,  and  of  the 
character  of  certainty  which  attaches  to  it;  mean¬ 
while  the  range  of  its  application  is  obviously  so 
limited  that  it  can  almost  be  disregarded  in  the  great 
majority  of  significant  problems.  I  may  have  an 
immediate  and,  it  would  seem,  an  indubitable  ap¬ 
prehension  of  mathematical  and  logical  relation¬ 
ships,  or  of  the  nature  of  the  content  that  enters 
into  my  experiences  of  sensation  or  of  memory.  But 
the  confidence  that  my  geometrical  intuitions  apply 
to  a  real  spatial  world,  or  that  my  logical  demands 
are  accepted  by  the  reality  with  which  I  come  in 
practical  contact,  or  that  events  actually  were  as  I 
remember  them,  or  that  sensation  gives  me  informa¬ 
tion  about  actual  things  and  forces,  is  a  confidence 
that  must  rest  on  different  grounds.  None  of  these 
last  assurances  is  capable  of  a  certainty  beyond  the 
reach  of  sceptical  doubt;  and  our  belief  must  there¬ 
fore  come  from  other  sources. 

The  source  is,  I  judge,  reducible  in  every  instance 
to  an  implicit  faith  in  our  own  nature  and  instincts. 
There  are  tendencies  in  various  directions  which  con¬ 
stitute  what  we  mean  concretely  by  “ourselves,”  and 
from  whose  influence  therefore  we  cannot  normally 
get  away;  and  belief  may  be  defined  tentatively  as 
just  the  coming  to  consciousness  of  that  persistent 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  9 

active  direction  of  attention  which  no  obstacles  can 
effectively  shunt  off.  In  this  work  of  influencing  be¬ 
lief — it  is  to  be  remembered  that  I  am  for  the  mo¬ 
ment  considering  only  the  starting  points  of  belief, 
which  must  be  presupposed  before  confidence  can  be 
either  strengthened  or  weakened  by  the  subsequent 
application  of  criteria — three  roughly  distinguish¬ 
able  forms  may  be  enumerated  which  human  nature 
takes;  there  is  a  confidence  due  to  our  intellectual 
nature,  to  our  practical  needs,  and  to  our  emotional 
preferences.  To  show  that  these  all  represent  actual 
occasions  of  belief,  it  is  only  necessary  to  point  to 
familiar  facts. 

The  most  fundamental  condition  of  belief  is 
man’s  intellectual  and  logical  constitution.  To  think 
at  all  we  have  to  accept  our  human  ways  of  think¬ 
ing.  And  that  men  do  accept  them,  and  place  con¬ 
fidence  in  their  own  intellectual  make-up,  is  a  simple 
matter  of  fact;  the  sceptical  argument  that  for  all 
we  know  our  minds  may  have  been  constructed  to 
falsify  reality  rather  than  to  grasp  it  truly,  while  it 
is  incapable  of  logical  refutation,  has  ordinarily  not 
the  least  effect  as  against  a  healthy  tendency  to 
believe. 

The  second  aspect  of  man’s  nature,  his  practical 
needs,  also  is,  I  take  it,  self-evidently  a  source  of 
belief.  Man  can  satisfy  the  requirements  of  his  or¬ 
ganism  only  by  taking  for  granted,  and  utilizing, 
the  physical  world  about  him;  and  the  strong  prac¬ 
tical  assurance  he  has  of  the  existence  of  this  en- 


10 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


vironing  world,  and  of  its  general  laws,  is  plainly 
connected  with  his  absolute  need  for  accepting  it  if 
he  is  to  continue  alive.  There  has  not  been  so  general 
a  philosophic  justification  of  this  belief.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  throw  doubt  upon  it  if  we  elect  to  keep 
to  purely  speculative  considerations.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  such  arguments  as  philosophy  has  re¬ 
sorted  to  have  entirely  failed  to  eradicate  the  be¬ 
lief,  either  in  the  non-philosophic  mind,  or,  it  is 
likely,  in  his  better  moments,  in  the  philosopher 
himself.  Accordingly  as  a  real  and  persistent  belief 
it  has  to  be  taken  account  of  in  our  search  for  truth. 

The  third  source  in  human  nature  has  a  still 
poorer  standing  in  the  philosophic  world;  and  here 
the  philosopher  gets  some  support  also  from  the 
more  cautious  layman,  who  sees  that  beliefs  due  to 
emotion  or  desire  are  peculiarly  liable  to  go  astray. 
At  present  however  I  am  merely  pointing  to  the 
fact  that  desire  and  feeling  do  notoriously  tend  to 
carry  belief  in  their  train.  And  their  influence  is  so 
far-reaching  and  insidious  that  even  the  philosopher 
on  his  guard  against  it  does  not  escape.  The  very 
effort  to  escape  has  its  dangers;  a  man  will  almost 
invariably  be  found  leaning  a  little  backward 
through  his  desire  not  to  be  influenced  by  desire.  And 
if  we  really  cannot  escape  the  influence  without 
superhuman  powers,  it  would  seem  the  sensible 
course  to  include  this,  too,  in  our  theory  of  belief, 
and  so  of  truth,  since  in  so  far  as  human  nature  is 
actually  the  source  of  belief,  any  ineradicable  ele- 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  1 1 


ment  of  human  nature  may  be  expected  to  play  a 
part. 

It  is  on  the  basis  of  this  general  presupposition, 
then,  that  I  shall  go  on  to  raise  the  further  and  more 
practically  significant  question:  How,  when  belief 
wavers,  are  we  to  go  to  work  to  give  it  a  reflective 
or  rational  justification?  It  is  highly  important  to 
remember  once  more  that  belief  must  already  exist 
before  this  question  can  be  asked,  and  so  that  there 
must  be  a  first  and  ultimate  source  of  truth  which 
is  prerational.  But  equally  it  is  clear  that  mere 
immediate  or  instinctive  belief  is  not  enough  for 
human  beings.  Such  belief  needs  to  be  emphasized 
in  its  proper  place,  in  view  of  the  strong  metaphysi¬ 
cal  temptation  to  overlook  it,  and  to  reduce  every¬ 
thing  to  logic.  But  for  our  ordinary  purposes  it  can 
be  taken  for  granted.  The  main  interest  here  lies  in 
the  further  question:  How  can  beliefs  be  justified, 
so  as  to  separate  out  the  sheep  from  the  goats? 

The  answer  I  should  give  to  this  last  question  is 
the  familiar  one  of  “coherence.”  Coherence  I  think 
must  be  rejected  as  a  sufficient  definition  of  truth, 
or  a  sufficient  reason  for  belief.  That  it  is  not  the 
definition  of  truth  I  shall  argue  presently  at  length; 
and  there  is  at  least  a  prima  facie  objection  to  the 
claim  that  mere  consistency  of  ideal  content  can 
safely  be  trusted  even  as  a  criterion,  unless  it  is  also 
backed  by  the  compulsion  of  so-called  “facts.”  But 
with  belief  presupposed,  it  does  seem  to  be  the  case 
that  coherence  is  the  only  test  by  which  we  can 


12 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


justify  belief  to  the  intellect,  outside  the  very  in¬ 
significant  field  where  intuitive  certainty  holds.  This 
does  not  necessarily  mean  that  we  ought  to  abandon 
all  beliefs  that  we  cannot  so  justify.  Nature  will 
probably  be  too  strong  for  us  in  any  case.  But  never¬ 
theless  we  do  find  on  the  whole  that  rational  belief 
is  the  better  and  more  satisfying  sort.  And  so  long 
as  we  play  the  game  of  reason,  and  profess  to  have 
passed  beyond  the  first  naive  and  non-reflective  stage 
of  experience,  “justification”  may  be  taken  as  mean¬ 
ing  “inclusion  within  a  coherent  system.” 

It  is  well  to  notice  more  precisely  wherein  this 
process  consists,  in  opposition  to  the  ideal  of  logical 
necessity.  The  essence  of  the  coherence  criterion  is 
not  certainty  of  logical  deduction,  but  consistency  of 
fact  or  experience.  Mere  logic  never  by  any  possi¬ 
bility  can  add  more  certainty  to  the  conclusion  than 
existed  in  the  premises.  Its  ideal  is,  therefore,  to 
carry  back  proof  to  more  and  more  general  premises, 
until  at  last  it  finds  something  in  its  own  right  on 
which  it  can  rest,  and  from  which  then  a  derivative 
certainty  passes  to  the  consequences.  The  ideal  of 
system ,  on  the  contrary,  implies  that  certainty  grows 
continually  as  new  facts  are  added.  The  simple  ele¬ 
ments  most  fundamental  in  our  system  are  not  self- 
evident  truths,  which,  as  will  presently  appear,  stop 
with  the  analysis  of  mental  content,  but,  rather, 
those  intuitions,  or  immediate  beliefs,  which  are  ex¬ 
pressions  of  faith,  since  these  alone  lead  us  to  reality 
in  the  more  distinctive  sense.  But  these,  although 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  13 

they  are  objects  of  natural  belief,  are  not  yet  ra¬ 
tionalized  or  intellectually  justified  belief.  When  we 
are  led  to  reflect  upon  them — which  means  that  their 
mere  instinctive  operation  is  no  longer  sufficient — 
they  are  seen  to  need  a  further  support  through  rea¬ 
son,  as  self-evident  truths  do  not.  The  conclusions, 
that  is,  have  to  be  more  certain  than  the  premises. 
And  the  possibility  of  this  depends,  not  on  logical 
deduction  from  what  is  self-evident,  but  on  a  coin¬ 
cidence  of  evidence.  In  other  words,  when  we  see 
that  two  independent  beliefs  corroborate  one  an¬ 
other,  the  confidence  we  have  in  both  is  increased; 
and  this  is  what  we  mean  by  their  intellectual  justi¬ 
fication.  For  this  to  happen,  logical  processes  are  re¬ 
quired,  because  to  reinforce  one  another  the  two 
must  come  in  contact  in  a  connected  system.  But 
the  essence  of  the  validation  lies  not  in  the  passing 
on  of  an  equal  measure  of  certainty  due  to  the  proc¬ 
ess  of  inference,  but  to  the  increase  of  certainty  due 
to  the  confluence  of  evidence. 

And  this  applies  as  well  to  the  “laws”  of  the 
mind  itself,  or  the  methods  which  the  process  of 
verification  involves,  in  the  very  general  sense  that, 
by  working  along  the  lines  which  these  methods  set, 
we  find  that  we  do  succeed  within  limits  in  ordering 
the  universe  of  experience.  The  probability  that  a 
special  type  of  mind  is  fitted  to  reality,  which  to  an 
outside  observer  might  seem  in  the  abstract  highly 
dubious,  is  to  us,  as  insiders,  almost  a  certainty,  since 
we  approach  the  question  already  with  an  immense 


H 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


amount  of  evidence  at  hand  in  the  shape  of  success¬ 
ful  experience.  The  material  of  experience,  which  in 
some  interpretation  comes  to  us  palpably  from  in¬ 
dependent  sources,  nevertheless  allows  itself  to  be 
organized;  our  minds  approve  themselves  by  turn¬ 
ing  out  to  be  perfectly  good  tools  for  helping  us  to 
make  our  way  in  the  world.  This  never  gives  theo¬ 
retical  certainty.  It  is  possible  that  we  may  just 
happen  to  have  got  along  so  far  without  disaster. 
But  we  have  enough  for  practical  certainty.  And  the 
ground  for  this,  once  more,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
combination  of  a  naive  tendency  to  accept  what  our 
nature  impels  us  to  accept,  with  the  logical  justifica¬ 
tion  which  this  gets  in  proportion  as  experience 
proves  amenable  to  our  intellectual  interpretations. 

The  justification  of  our  practical  persuasion  is 
represented  most  conspicuously  in  the  experimental 
methods  of  science.  The  greater  the  number  of  facts, 
obtained  independently  through  the  senses,  which 
fit  into  the  more  or  less  hypothetical  schemes  of  the 
various  sciences,  the  stronger  the  confidence  in,  and 
the  sense  of  logical  justification  for,  these  schemes. 
The  outcome  of  experiment  is  not  simply  to  prove 
that  the  investigator  was  right  in  expecting  some 
particular  result  to  turn  up,  though  this  is  all  it 
proves  with  certainty.  His  real  meaning  was  not  that 
such  a  particular  future  event  would  happen,  but 
that  the  fact  of  its  happening  verifies  a  certain  con¬ 
stitution  of  reality  held  to  be  responsible  for  it. 
Here  also,  to  have  its  logical  value,  there  must  be  a 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  1 5 

belief  presupposed  which  is  to  receive  verification; 
otherwise  the  new  fact  simply  happens.  Fulfilled 
expectation  would  have  no  logical  force  unless 
there  were  a  presumption  of  law  prior  to  the  mere 
facts  of  experience  in  detail.  This  presumption  in  its 
general  form  is  given  in  the  law  of  causation  as  a 
practical  postulate,  or  an  intellectual  principle  hav¬ 
ing  its  basis  in  the  necessities  of  our  practical  nature. 
The  world  being  what  it  is,  unless  an  organism  had, 
ahead  of  actual  experience,  a  tendency  to  look  for 
repetitions  of  experience,  and  to  act  as  if  uniformity 
existed,  it  would  stand  little  chance  of  surviving. 
The  law  of  causation  in  its  scientific  sense  seems  to 
be  the  translation  into  terms  of  the  intellect  of  this 
habit  of  expecting  the  familiar.  But  while  as  a  pos¬ 
tulate,  or  implicit  belief,  it  precedes  experience,  as 
a  justified  belief  it  gets  its  standing  from  the  fact 
that  nature  is  on  the  whole  inclined  to  bear  it  out. 

The  most  controversial  side  of  the  matter  is  in 
connection  with  the  postulates  of  emotion  or  desire. 
That  these  do  actually  influence  our  belief  is  plain. 
That  they  are  as  real  a  part  of  human  nature  as  the 
elements  commonly  accepted  as  having  a  right  to 
sway  belief,  most  people  would  grant  is  also  true. 
Why  then  should  there  be  so  much  hesitation  in  al¬ 
lowing  them  equally  a  theoretical  standing4? 

The  reasons  are  apparently  of  two  sorts.  First 
there  is  the  familiar  empirical  fact — a  part  there¬ 
fore  of  the  system  of  our  world  of  facts — that  beliefs 
influenced  by  feeling  or  strong  desire  have,  where 


i6 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH4? 


it  is  possible  to  subject  them  to  verification,  so  often 
been  proved  to  be  in  the  wrong.  And,  secondly,  there 
is  the  tendency  which  emotion  shows  to  attach  itself 
to  matters  where  proof  and  disproof  alike  are  im¬ 
possible  or  very  difficult,  and  so  to  evade  the  tests 
that  elsewhere  have  been  found  useful  in  keeping 
belief  within  safe  bounds.  Both  these  facts  have  to 
be  recognized ;  but  they  ought  not  to  count  for  more 
than  they  are  worth. 

The  first  objection  implies  that  the  case  against 
feeling  is  not  a  priori ,  but  empirical.  There  is  noth¬ 
ing  in  it  to  make  us  reject  outright  the  claim  of  any 
tendency  to  belief  which  actually  is  grounded  in 
human  nature;  the  objection  applies  only  to  beliefs 
in  whose  case  there  are  positive  grounds  for  doubt. 
If  we  are  to  begin  doubting  wherever  there  is  a  logi¬ 
cal  chance  for  doubt,  without  regard  to  reasons  for 
doubt  in  particular,  we  are  inevitably  on  the  way 
to  a  complete  scepticism.  We  have  to  ask,  then,  why 
it  is  that  emotional  beliefs  are  so  provocative  of 
doubt;  what  is  the  positive  case  against  them4? 

An  answer  here  is  not  difficult.  Emotion  is  apt  to 
be  misleading,  not  because  the  thing  in  which  we 
believe  is  also  an  object  of  desire,  but  because  want¬ 
ing  it  is  apt  to  affect  our  mental  processes,  and 
prevent  us  from  looking  at  the  facts  just  as  they  are. 
If  emotion  did  not  blind  us  and  keep  us  from 
straight  thinking,  if  it  did  not  lead  us  to  overlook 
and  close  our  minds  to  uncongenial  evidence,  I  see 
no  special  reason  why  the  fact  that  the  object  of  be- 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  17 

lief  is  something  we  desire  should  constitute  the 
slightest  drawback.  On  the  whole,  in  view  of  a 
number  of  considerations,  it  seems  quite  as  easy  to 
make  out  a  case  for  the  presumption  that  the  uni¬ 
verse  has  some  favorable  relation  to  human  desires 
and  possibilities  of  development,  as  for  the  opposite 
assumption  that  between  our  human  demands  and 
the  constitution  of  the  world  there  is  no  relevant 
connection.  The  facts  are  not  compelling;  and  a 
good  deal  depends  upon  the  attitude  in  which  one 
approaches  them.  But  an  unfavorable  presumption 
is  just  as  truly  a  bias  here  as  a  favorable  one,  espe¬ 
cially  in  view  of  the  subtle  temptation  which  leads 
the  philosopher  to  adopt  a  non-humanistic  prefer¬ 
ence  because  it  is  not  quite  the  popular  opinion,  and 
so  ministers  a  little  to  his  spiritual  pride.  The  real 
objection  to  the  feelings  is  not  that  they  are  at  work, 
but  that  they  are  at  work  surreptitiously ,  and  so  pro¬ 
duce  effects  that  are  incalculable.  The  source  of  the 
trouble  is  not  that  we  reason  in  terms  of  emotional 
objects,  but  that  we  reason  in  emotional  ways,  and 
so  cannot  get  these  objects  in  their  true  perspective. 
If  therefore  it  be  possible  for  a  man,  as  it  surely  is 
to  a  very  considerable  degree,  to  include  his  own 
desires  within  the  field  of  objects  that  he  can  ex¬ 
amine  critically  without  being  bound  thereby  to 
adopt  of  necessity  a  blind  and  prejudiced  attitude 
toward  them,  if  he  can  estimate  the  claims  of  what 
he  wants  impartially  and  without  ignoring  con¬ 
siderations  on  the  other  side,  the  positive  ground  for 


i8 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


suspecting  desire  would  have  been  removed  without 
prejudging  the  entire  case. 

The  remaining  difficulty  would  be  that  the  be¬ 
liefs  are  capable  of  no  further  testing.  Even  if  this 
were  so,  it  is  conceivable  that  they  might  still  per¬ 
sist;  however,  in  such  a  case  their  intellectual  stand¬ 
ing  would  doubtless  not  be  very  satisfactory.  But  at 
the  worst  this  very  fact  of  their  permanence  would 
prevent  them  from  being  left  wholly  without  intel¬ 
lectual  justification.  Thus  a  man,  without  being 
able  in  any  other  way  to  give  reasons  for  an  emo¬ 
tionally  satisfying  belief,  might  very  well  justify 
himself  at  least  to  this  extent:  The  very  strength  of 
my  unreasoning  belief,  he  may  argue,  and  the  fact 
that  it  persists  against  discouragement,  is  proof  to 
me  that  it  may  be  justified,  though  I  cannot  see  how 
in  detail ;  for  whenever  I  find  such  persistency  in 
nature,  I  have  reason  to  hold  that  it  must  be  rooted 
somehow  in  reality.  A  man  has  a  right  to  this  atti¬ 
tude  only  in  case,  again,  he  has  not  allowed  desire 
to  blind  his  eyes,  but  has  actually  put  his  belief  to 
the  hazard  of  the  unfavorable  evidence,  and  shown 
by  experiment  that  its  persistence  is  not  merely  due 
to  its  being  sheltered  artificially  from  danger.  But 
this  granted,  the  conditions  of  the  rational  criterion 
have,  though  in  a  very  general  way,  been  met.  It 
is  not  simply  that  the  belief  exists.  Its  existence  has 
been  justified,  and  justified  by  being  brought  into  a 
larger  system  of  facts.  This  may  not  be  a  convincing 
argument  by  itself  in  a  particular  case.  But  it  is  in 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  19 

character  nevertheless  a  rational,  and  not  a  merely 
emotional,  justification. 

Whether  we  can  go  beyond  this  very  general 
justification  can  hardly  be  answered  except  by  con¬ 
sidering  beliefs  in  detail.  It  will  be  sufficient  here  to 
note  that  the  belief  in  question  may  take  either  of 
two  different  forms,  whose  status  logically  is  not 
the  same.  One  form,  and  the  simplest  one,  is  this, 
that  the  world  is  of  a  nature  to  render  the  achieve¬ 
ment  of  my  ends  or  desires  practically  feasible. 
This  sort  of  belief  is  clearly  verifiable  in  the  same 
sense  that  a  physical  hypothesis  is  verifiable;  it  is 
proved  by  actually  achieving  such  ends.  Even  be¬ 
fore  the  issue  it  stands  rationally  justified  in  terms 
of  our  existing  knowledge  of  the  character  of  the 
world,  and  of  what  therefore  can  probably  be  done 
in  and  with  it;  and  when  the  end  has  been  gained, 
or  definitely  lost,  it  is  attested  or  discredited  by  the 
fact. 

It  is  not  this  merely  practical  meaning,  however, 
which  has  been  seriously  at  issue  in  philosophy. 
What  one  side  has  claimed,  and  the  other  disputed, 
is  not  that  the  world  is  of  a  nature  to  permit  the 
attainment  in  it  of  our  human  purposes,  but  that 
it  has  in  its  own  character  certain  qualities  that  in¬ 
volve,  not  a  mere  tolerance  of  our  preferences,  but 
the  same  preferences  as  our  own.  This  without  ques¬ 
tion  is  our  naive  point  of  view  under  the  influence  of 
our  feelings.  We  say  naturally,  not  merely  that  the 
world  affords  us  a  chance  to  achieve  our  aspirations, 


20 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


but  that  the  world  itself  is  good,  and  is  working 
toward  a  good  end. 

But  even  in  this  latter  case,  while  the  evidence 
may  be  less  convincing,  it  does  not  appear  to  stand 
on  an  essentially  different  footing  from  that  of  any 
belief  that  professes  to  describe  the  nature  of  things, 
as  distinct  from  empirical  sequences  of  phenomena 
in  particular.  Even  in  terms  of  sequences,  complete 
and  final  verification  never  attaches  to  the  universal 
laws  of  sequence,  which  may  be  supposed  to  sum  up 
the  actual  relational  character  of  reality,  but  only 
to  eventualities  in  the  way  of  particular  anticipated 
happenings.  Just  as,  accordingly,  a  belief  that  the 
world  is  intelligible  starts  from  a  natural  trust  in 
the  powers  of  intelligence,  and  is  justified  by  the 
success  with  which  progressively  we  bring  the  facts 
of  the  world  into  relation,  or,  more  specifically,  as 
a  belief  in  the  objectivity  of  scientific  law  starts 
from  a  bias  toward  orderly  expectation,  which  more 
and  more  is  rationally  justified  as  events  are  found 
to  correspond  to  the  expectations  aroused — other¬ 
wise  our  belief  would  not  be  in  a  universal  law,  but 
only  in  the  particular  fact  expected, — so  the  belief 
that  the  world  is  good  starts  from  our  naive  faith 
in  our  feelings  of  value,  and  may  equally  in  some 
degree  be  considered  as  verified  in  so  far  as  the  uni¬ 
verse  turns  out  to  be  favorable  to  the  leading  of  the 
good  life. 

And  in  the  same  way,  though  with  extreme  cau¬ 
tion,  the  possibility  is  open  for  a  rational  holding  of 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  21 


beliefs  that  assert  more  particular  matters  of  fact, 
even  where  verification  is  humanly  impossible.  A 
case  that  naturally  suggests  itself  is  that  of  immor¬ 
tality.  At  the  start  a  belief  in  immortality  is  almost 
on  a  par  with  the  early  glimpsing  of  ideal  human 
possibilities  in  this  present  world — the  first  dim  in¬ 
tuition,  say,  of  a  universal  human  brotherhood.  This 
for  a  long  time  had  to  look  so  far  ahead  into  the 
future  for  its  verification  that  it  could  be  held,  like 
a  belief  in  immortality,  only  on  the  ground  of  an 
inner  assurance  of  its  desirability.  But  the  cases 
differ  in  that  we  should  hardly  hold  as  justified  a 
belief  about  earthly  possibilities  which  history  did 
not  show  some  tendency  to  realize,  whereas  immor¬ 
tality  at  the  end  is  supposedly  in  the  same  case  as  at 
the  beginning,  so  far  as  experimental  verification 
goes.  Nevertheless  the  other  possibility  remains 
open,  and  should  be  kept  in  mind  in  face  of  the 
popular  tendency  to  refuse  to  be  satisfied  with  any¬ 
thing  short  of  verification  in  the  scientific  sense.  If 
the  belief  can  be  shown  to  be  logically  connected 
with  other  beliefs  for  which  ground  does  exist  in 
the  actual  facts  of  experience,  it  shares  in  some 
degree  their  rational  character.  This  is  the  case  in 
science  even,  where  a  fact  can  be  seen  to  follow  from 
an  accepted  hypothesis.  We  do  not  feel  too  con¬ 
fident — for  we  know  the  uncertainties  of  our  knowl¬ 
edge — until  by  experiment  it  has  been  verified.  But 
it  would  be  an  over-wrought  spirit  of  caution  that 
would  refuse  to  give  it  any  credence.  In  proportion 


22 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


to  the  certainty  of  the  hypothesis,  and  the  clearness 
of  the  logical  connection,  we  do  take  many  things 
for  granted  which  we  never  have  put  actually  to 
the  test.  This  is  notably  the  case  with  our  belief  in 
past  events,  which  of  course  in  strictness  never  can 
be  verified. 

And  the  belief  in  immortality  need  make  no  claim 
different  in  kind.  If  we  have  reason  to  accept  a  par¬ 
ticular  kind  of  world  into  which  an  inconsistency 
would  be  introduced  through  the  failure  of  certain 
kinds  of  life  to  continue,  the  belief  in  immortality 
is  in  so  far  a  rational  belief,  and  ought  not  to  be  re¬ 
jected  offhand  as  a  mere  product  of  unreasoning  de¬ 
sire.  Verification  of  course  is  exceedingly  important 
if  we  can  get  it,  and  its  absence  is  a  drawback.  But 
it  is  not  essential  to  rationality.  The  logical  value  of 
verification  lies,  again,  not  in  the  mere  experience  of 
the  new  fact,  but  in  the  way  in  which  it  enters  into 
the  system  of  reality  already  present  in  the  hypothe¬ 
sis,  and  so  enlarges  and  strengthens  this.  Fundamen¬ 
tally,  therefore,  it  plays  the  same  part  as  any  other 
fact  in  the  system.  It  gets  its  peculiar  significance 
simply  because  it  was  thought  out  and  prophesied 
ahead  of  experience;  not  only  does  it  counteract  in 
consequence  our  natural  disposition  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  facts  we  have  alreadv  collected,  but  it  is 
indefinitely  improbable  that  an  expectation  based 
upon  a  complex  reasoning  process  will  simply  hap¬ 
pen  to  hit  the  future  event,  as  it  would  do  were  not 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  23 


the  hypothesis  already  on  the  right  track  in  its  un¬ 
derstanding  of  the  world. 

The  position  I  have  been  taking  may  be  summed 
up  as  follows:  We  have  to  distinguish  between  the 
necessity  of  a  belief,  its  self-evidence,  and  its  practi¬ 
cal  certainty;  and  it  is  the  last  about  which  we  are 
really  most  concerned.  This  is  a  psychological  state 
of  mind,  a  persistent  feeling  of  acquiescence  or 
assent,  which,  if  it  goes  along  with  an  honest  at¬ 
tempt  to  canvass  the  whole  situation  to  the  best  of 
our  ability,  has  the  final  word  to  say  about  what  we 
shall  regard  as  truth.  And  instead  of  attaching  to 
the  simplest  truths,  it  belongs  rather  with  the  grow¬ 
ing  fulness  of  belief  and  experience.  It  is  due  to  the 
compounding  of  assurance  that  comes  from  the 
working  together  of  numberless  facts  and  satisfac¬ 
tions,  and  has  in  it  an  element  both  of  faith  and  of 
intellectual  justification,  the  blending  of  the  two 
constituting  reason.  In  the  large,  the  faith  is  faith  in 
ourselves — in  the  demands  of  our  nature  and  the 
possibility  of  their  satisfaction.  This  exists  prior  to 
the  facts,  because  our  life  is  organic  before  it  is  intel¬ 
lectual,  and  we  cannot  in  thinking  eliminate  our¬ 
selves.  But  we  find  also  these  demands  capable 
within  limits  of  getting  satisfaction;  and  so  to  the 
naive  trust  is  added  rational  conviction.  The  greater 
the  mass  of  experienced  fact  that  comes  within  our 
system,  and  the  greater  the  facility  of  successful 
anticipation  of  future  fact,  the  more  our  confidence 
extends. 


24 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


And  equally  it  is  greater  the  more  widely  it  ap¬ 
peals  to  the  various  sides  of  our  nature,  in  so  far  as 
these  are  approved  as  normal  by  the  teachings  of 
experience.  This  is  why,  other  things  being  equal,  a 
philosophy  which  finds  a  place  for  man’s  emotional 
needs  has  a  better  chance  of  survival  than  one  which 
merely  orders  the  facts  of  sense  experience.  The 
former  exercises  no  compulsion  whatever  over  a 
mind  which  is  not  predisposed  in  favor  of  human¬ 
istic  considerations;  and  if  the  human  mind  gen¬ 
erally  could  be  counted  on  to  take  the  same  attitude 
as  that  of  the  occasional  philosopher,  the  final 
success  of  naturalism  could  probably  be  predicted. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  naturalism  leaves 
something  out  which  human  nature  seems  to  want; 
and  it  is  humanism  which  every  time  steps  in  and 
prevents  its  triumph. 

Meanwhile  one  aspect  of  this  thesis  needs  perhaps 
some  little  qualification.  What  it  recommends  is 
that,  in  opposition  to  the  tendency  to  look  for  our 
most  settled  convictions  among  the  simple  results  of 
analysis,  we  should  rather  turn  to  the  comprehensive 
beliefs  of  developed  human  experience  as  our  stand¬ 
ard  of  assurance  in  the  holding  of  truths.  Roughly 
and  in  the  large,  I  believe  it  to  be  so  that  “common 
sense”  as  constituted  by  the  more  massive  convic¬ 
tions  of  the  human  race — of  man  in  his  natural  habi¬ 
tat  going  about  his  regular  business — supplies  a 
standard  of  sanity  which  philosophy  will  reject  at 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  25 


its  peril.  But  there  are  two  points  of  interpretative 
caution  here  that  deserve  attention. 

In  the  first  place,  I  am  not  intending  to  disparage 
analysis  in  the  least.  It  is  only  through  analysis  that 
beliefs  become  amenable  to  reason  at  all.  We  cannot 
be  content  to  accept  things  simply  in  the  mass,  for 
that  leaves  no  way  to  choose  when  the  voice  of  man¬ 
kind  is  uncertain  in  its  utterance,  or  when,  as  con¬ 
stantly  happens,  the  general  belief  needs  modifica¬ 
tion  and  readjustment.  But  neither  can  we  expect 
to  get  ahead  by  throwing  over  the  concrete  beliefs 
of  everyday  use,  and  confining  our  assent  to  their 
simpler  ingredients.  The  path  of  knowledge  is  alto¬ 
gether  too  crooked  and  tangled  to  make  this  a  safe 
procedure.  It  is  of  no  avail  to  have,  in  reason,  a 
compass,  unless  we  know  more  or  less  concretely 
the  goal  we  are  setting  out  to  reach;  and  there  is 
nothing  whatever  to  supply  this  goal  apart  from 
that  somewhat  vague  and  loosely  articulated,  but 
very  real,  w  el  t- an  s  chaining ,  which  represents  the  net 
outcome  of  man’s  experience  up  to  date,  which 
passes  over  to  the  individual  in  the  first  place  as  a 
biological  and  social  inheritance,  and  which  in  its 
large  features  has  already  approved  itself  to  him  in 
practice  before  he  is  competent  to  bring  criticism 
to  bear  upon  it,  although  this  or  that  aspect  of  it  may 

call  insistentlv  for  revisal  when  he  is  able  to  inter- 

* 

pret  his  demands  on  the  world  more  discriminat¬ 
ingly.  Just  as  we  commonly  think  that  social  reform 
is  best  accomplished  by  taking  existing  social  in- 


26 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


stitutions  for  granted  as  a  starting  point,  and  then 
correcting  this  or  that  feature  as  circumstances  may 
dictate,  rather  than  by  setting  out  to  abolish  every¬ 
thing  at  once  and  to  build  up  society  from  the  bot¬ 
tom — the  latter  task  is  too  big  for  human  powers — 
so  in  our  philosophizing  the  only  practicable  method 
is,  not  to  doubt  universally  or  where  academic  doubt 
is  not  precluded,  but  to  examine  our  beliefs  piece¬ 
meal,  all  the  time  holding  fast  as  a  background  to 
that  positive  nature  of  things  which  appeals  to  our 
massive  and  unanalyzed  intelligence  through  its  sat¬ 
isfactoriness  on  the  whole,  and  apart  from  which  we 
have  no  way  whatever  of  telling  whether  any  aspect 
in  particular  is  more  or  less  probable,  except  in  the 
relatively  few  and  unimportant  cases  where  it  is 
strictly  self-evident. 

For  without  a  background,  it  is  impossible  we 
should  think  at  all.  Thinking  is  the  bringing  of  our 
existing  beliefs  to  bear  upon  the  examination  of  a 
belief  in  particular;  and  the  fuller  the  content  of 
experience  interlaced  in  this  apperceptive  mass,  the 
more  valuable  the  judgment,  though  the  precise  na¬ 
ture  of  the  elements  thus  present  may  not  in  the 
judgment  itself  be  subjected  to  analysis.  For  sound 
judgment,  this  background  must  have  been  there 
at  the  first  step  of  philosophic  analysis,  unless  we  are 
to  suppose  that  a  man  with  positive  convictions  and 
a  full  experience  is  less  qualified  to  perform  the 
critical  act  than  one  whose  mind  approaches  a  jelly 
or  a  blank.  Sound  method  therefore  does  not  demand 


BELIEF  AND  THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  27 


that  we  should  clear  our  minds  as  nearly  as  we  can 
of  all  content,  and  allow  it  to  fill  up  again  only  as 
the  dialectical  process  advances.  What  determines 
the  worth  of  our  results  is  precisely  the  wealth  of 
experience,  partly  and  at  the  start  very  largely  un¬ 
analyzed,  lying  back  of  the  rational  process.  Natu¬ 
rally  this  “assumed  universe”  cannot  be  held  exempt 
from  progressive  analysis  and  criticism.  We  should 
understand  as  fully  as  possible  what  we  are  presup¬ 
posing,  and  why.  But  the  criticism  is  rather  to  re¬ 
move  internal  inconsistencies  than  to  put  on  trial  the 
conception  as  a  whole;  if  we  cast  aside  the  actual 
fruits  of  experience,  racial  and  individual,  nothing 
remains  to  take  their  place. 

A  certain  danger  does  no  doubt  exist  here,  in  that 
the  very  wealth  of  experience  may  lead  a  man  to 
trust  his  first  impressions  when  a  severer  analysis 
is  urgently  demanded.  And  when  on  the  other  hand 
we  once  come  to  realize  how  easily  unanalyzed 
judgments  go  astray,  it  may  seem  to  our  more  so¬ 
phisticated  sense  impossible  to  avoid  a  lurking  dis¬ 
trust  of  their  pronouncements.  But  the  situation  is 
relieved  in  part  by  a  distinction.  It  is  not  that  the 
judgment  should  be  unanalyzed.  On  the  contrary, 
we  should  use  our  utmost  effort  to  see  our  meaning 
in  the  judgment  clearly  and  distinctly,  with  the 
finest  discriminations  we  can  manage.  No  good  ever 
comes  of  confusion  as  to  what  we  intend.  It  is  in 
connection  with  the  grounds  for  accepting  the  truth 
of  this  intention  that  the  vague  and  more  subcon- 


28 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


scious  “total  experience”  plays  its  role.  And  al¬ 
though  this  also  should,  as  I  have  said,  be  cleared  up 
as  rapidly  as  may  be,  it  never  can  be  entirely  ex¬ 
hausted,  while  nevertheless,  and  even  at  the  start, 
it  is  rightly  to  be  trusted  cautiously,  under  penalty 
of  our  being  left  without  sail  or  rudder  in  a  welter¬ 
ing  sea  of  “possibilities”  or  of  “logical  entities.” 

Meanwhile  a  second  point  against  the  rational¬ 
istic  or  Cartesian  method  is,  that  no  philosopher  ever 
does  live  up  to  it  in  point  of  fact.  You  will  find  him 
all  along  surreptitiously  bringing  in  the  common- 
sense  philosophy  of  mankind  to  justify  his  conclu¬ 
sions,  in  the  form  of  considerations  which  he  would 
have  no  manner  of  right  to  appeal  to  if  he  really 
were  allowing  nothing  to  influence  him  save  his  rea¬ 
soned  results  up  to  date.  And  if  he  is  to  do  this  at 
all,  it  surely  is  much  better  that  he  should  confess 
to  his  procedure  and  recognize  it  in  his  ideal  of 
method,  rather  than  keep  it  under  cover. 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


I  HAVE  already  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  ideal  of  knowledge  which  I  have  been  at¬ 
tempting  in  the  preceding  section  briefly  to  justify 
falls  considerably  short  of  the  demands  that  philoso¬ 
phy  commonly  has  been  understood  as  making.  And 
it  was  recognized  that,  in  connection  with  some  of 
the  simpler  elements  of  experience,  a  kind  of  assur¬ 
ance  is  apparently  sometimes  possible  which  our 
more  massive  and  complex  beliefs  are  unable  to 
attain,  although  the  objects  of  this  assurance,  it  was 
also  assumed,  seldom  carry  us  very  far  in  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  a  working  philosophy  suited  to  our  practical 
needs.  In  view  of  its  relation  to  historical  problems, 
this  position  needs  some  further  scrutiny.  In  the 
present  section  therefore  I  am  setting  out  to  inquire 
what  we  mean  by  certain  knowledge,  and  under 
what  conditions,  if  any,  we  may  expect  to  secure  it. 
But  since  the  question  has  more  frequently  been  put 
in  a  somewhat  narrower  form,  I  will  first  consider 
what  we  mean  by  “necessary”  truth.  This  last  is  a 
term  which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  philosophy 
that  many  philosophers  refuse  to  call  anything 
knowledge  which  falls  short  of  it. 

The  most  obvious  meaning  of  necessity  is  that 
which  attaches  to  it  in  formal  logic.  Certain  proposi¬ 
tions,  namely,  are  found  to  involve  as  part  of  their 


30 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


meaning  another  proposition;  and  the  last  then  is 
logically  necessary,  in  that,  so  long  as  we  hold  the 
premises  true,  and  keep  our  meaning  unchanged,  we 
cannot  possibly  deny  it.  Practically  of  course  we  are 
often  able  to  deny  things  that  logically  we  are  bound 
to  accept,  because  we  can  refuse  to  see  the  identity 
involved.  We  either  forget  all  about  the  premises 
while  we  are  denying  the  conclusion,  or  we  hold  our 
ideas  so  loosely  and  vaguely  that  we  hardly  know 
just  what  we  do  mean,  or  we  slip  inadvertently  into 
a  definite,  but  an  altered,  meaning.  There  is  nothing 
to  prevent  a  man  from  doing  any  of  these  things  if 
he  chooses,  except  the  fact  that  he  thereby  sets  up 
different  rules  of  the  argumentative  game  from  his 
fellows,  and  thus  loses  the  advantages  of  success  in 
argument.  But  when  he  really  takes  the  trouble  to 
realize  clearly  his  own  meaning,  he  finds  it  impos¬ 
sible  to  refuse  assent  to  the  claims  of  logical  neces¬ 
sity.  If  he  sees  that  the  meaning  of  his  conclusion  is 
identical  with  a  meaning  present  in  what  he  already 
has  accepted,  he  would  have,  otherwise,  to  assert 
and  deny  the  same  thing  at  the  same  moment; 
which,  since  assertion  and  denial  are  incompatible 
attitudes,  is  a  physical  before  it  is  a  logical  impossi¬ 
bility. 

So  far  however,  to  repeat,  we  have  gone  only  a 
short  way  toward  meeting  the  demands  of  our 
everyday  notions  of  truth.  For  the  necessity  is  one 
of  inference  only,  of  necessary  connection .  It  is  hy¬ 
pothetical  necessity.  And  it  tells  us  therefore  noth- 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


3i 


ing  of  the  truth  value  of  the  situation  as  a  whole.  If 
the  premises  are  true,  then  the  conclusion  necessarily 
follows;  but  the  truth  of  the  premises  must  be  set¬ 
tled  on  independent  grounds.  Of  course  a  way  might 
be  found  of  deducing  them  also  from  further  prem¬ 
ises.  But  this  process  needs  must  have  an  end; 
somewhere  we  must  get  to  original  sources  of  belief. 
Granted  that  we  have  belief  to  begin  with  that  goes 
back  of  logical  implication,  such  belief  may,  it  has 
appeared,  be  strengthened  indefinitely  by  a  logical 
connection  with  other  beliefs;  but  without  such  a 
foundation  to  build  upon,  systematization  gets  us 
nowhere.  We  can  add  any  number  of  zeros  together 
without  arriving  at  the  number  one.  A  man  clever 
enough,  and  with  sufficient  time  on  his  hands,  might 
form  conceivably  out  of  the  same  data  a  great  many 
complicated  and  ingenious  systems,  which  might 
nevertheless  all  alike  be  totally  “unreal.”  Somehow 
the  system  has  got  to  be  tied  down  by  the  fact  of  be¬ 
lief  if  we  are  ever  to  call  it  “true.” 

For  the  act  which  gives  us  the  elemental  facts  of 
belief,  it  has  already  been  found  convenient  to  use 
the  name  intuition.  The  word  has  had  various  senses 
in  philosophy;  here  it  is  intended  to  refer  to  any 
process  which  involves  the  immediate  acceptance,  in 
the  way  of  belief,  of  some  datum  of  knowledge 
which  does  not  get  its  credentials  through  its  con¬ 
nection  with  other  data.  Many  of  these  intuitions, 
it  has  appeared  already,  may  be  neglected  for  our 
present  purpose,  since  they  are  not  to  be  regarded  as 


32 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


giving  us  certain  knowledge.  Meanwhile  when  they 
are  held  to  be  certain,  they  are  accepted,  not  because 
they  are  necessary,  but  because  they  are  self-evident. 
And  what  I  mean  by  self-evidence,  in  the  sense  in 
which  certainty  can  be  held  to  attach  to  it,  is 
this:  I  find  it  impossible,  even  in  imagination,  to 
think  of  myself  as  conceivably  in  a  state  of  mind 
where  I  should  consider  the  proposition  open  to 
doubt,  the  ground  of  my  assurance  lying  within  the 
content  of  the  proposition  itself.  I  add  the  last 
clause,  though  it  is  scarcely  necessary.  Assurance  due 
to  strong  emotion  or  desire,  which  is  the  form  of 
“intuition”  it  is  intended  more  particularly  to  ex¬ 
clude,  could  hardly  be  brought  under  the  definition 
in  any  case,  since  it  is  always  possible,  and  usually 
easy,  to  imagine  myself  not  ruled  by  this  desire.  It 
may  be  noted  that  this  accounts  as  well  for  the  lack 
of  finality  that  attaches  to  the  coherence  criterion; 
if  my  confidence  is  due  to  the  backing  which  a  belief 
has  from  other  and  related  beliefs,  I  shall  hardly 
find  it  impossible  to  imagine  myself  not  believing  it. 
I  may  be  unable  to  imagine  anybody’s  belief  refus¬ 
ing  to  be  called  forth  provided  he  accepted  as  true 
all  the  evidence  that  is  now  before  me.  But  since  the 
assurance  attaches  to  the  belief  not  in  its  own  right, 
but  by  virtue  of  something  else,  and  since  I  can 
very  well  imagine  these  facts  otherwise,  or  new 
facts  added  that  would  change  their  face,  belief  here 
cannot  go  beyond  practical  certainty. 

Now  my  thesis  is,  that  the  foregoing  definition  of 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


33 


self-evidence  will  be  found  to  apply  solely  to  judg¬ 
ments  about  present  experience,  or  experience  im¬ 
mediately  past.  This  will  include  truths  of  two 
somewhat  different  orders — assertions  of  the  psycho¬ 
logical  existe?ice  of  states  of  consciousness  or  facts 
of  immediate  experiencing,  and,  for  practical  pur¬ 
poses  more  important,  assertions  that  such  and  such 
is  an  accurate  description  of  the  intellectual  con¬ 
tent  or  meaning  which  at  the  moment  I  have  in 
mind.  That  some  judgments  in  this  field  can  attain 
self-evident  certainty  is  Descartes7  starting  point 
in  philosophic  method;  although  Descartes,  by  fail¬ 
ing  to  distinguish  sharply  the  two  forms  of  judg¬ 
ment,  and  by  adding  to  the  second  of  them  the  as¬ 
sumption  of  existential  import  which  belongs  only 
to  the  first,  obscured  the  nature  of  his  own  pro¬ 
cedure. 

To  interpret  this  thesis  a  few  words  of  explana¬ 
tion  are  called  for,  though  these  presuppose  certain 
points  whose  fuller  justification  will  need  to  be 
postponed  to  a  subsequent  section.  Ordinarily  we 
know  things  indirectly  through  the  medium  of  ideas, 
or  mental  processes,  which  alone  are  present  bodily. 
Physical  objects  spatially  present  to  the  organism 
are  “known77  only  by  means  of  their  effects  in  sensa¬ 
tion;  and  all  objects  whatsoever  that  are  spatially 
or  temporally  removed  are  represented  in  knowledge 
by  “ideas,77  in  the  narrower  and  more  literal  sense. 
And  on  such  terms  certainty  seems  out  of  the  ques¬ 
tion,  since  we  never  are  able  to  rule  out  the  chance 


34 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


that  things  not  existentially  present  in  consciousness 
may  be  inadequately  represented  by  our  ideas  of 
them.  So  long  as  we  fail  to  recognize  this  element 
of  possible  error,  we  may  uncritically  accept  a  be¬ 
lief  as  self-evident;  and  even  after  it  is  recognized 
we  may  still  remain  practically  assured.  But  theo¬ 
retically  we  are  bound  to  admit  that  the  assurance 
is  subject  to  discount,  and  so  the  instance  falls  out¬ 
side  the  definition.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  this 
definition  can  hold,  it  would  appear,  only  of  an 
object  of  belief  that  is  literally  and  in  its  own  per¬ 
son  present  in  the  experiencing  process,  since  only 
thus  do  we  eliminate  the  academic  chance  of  error 
just  noted. 

The  possibility  of  such  immediate  acquaintance 
in  a  form  to  justify  a  claim  to  certainty,  I  find  con¬ 
ceivable  only  on  one  showing.  To  begin  with,  if  a 
present  fact  of  conscious  experience  may  not  only 
be,  but  if  also  we  can  give  immediate  attention  to 
it,  and  bring  it  into  the  focus  of  consciousness,  it 
would  seem  possible  for  us  to  know  directly  both 
that  it  is,  and  what  it  is,  without  the  intervention  of 
ideas,  and  so  theoretically  to  have  the  chance  of 
being  certain  about  it.  There  would  be  two  limits  to 
this.  The  first  is  the  limit  of  the  range  of  clear  at¬ 
tention;  what  lies  beyond  this  is  subject  to  theoreti¬ 
cal  doubt  even  as  a  present  fact  of  experience.  And 
for  sense  content,  at  least,  this  may  be  the  only 
limit.  When  a  sensation  is  held  automatically  con¬ 
stant,  or  almost  constant,  by  the  continued  presence 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


35 


of  its  producing  cause,  we  seem  able  to  attend  to 
it,  or  be  immediately  aware  of  it,  at  the  very  moment 
of  its  conscious  existence.  Thus  if  we  simplify  the 
sensational  field  sufficiently,  and  give  heed,  say,  just 
to  a  patch  of  color,  we  have  an  immediate  sense  that 
while  it  lasts  this  is,  and  is  just  what  it  is,  in  a  way 
to  make  any  expression  of  doubt  seem  to  us  quite 
meaningless.  In  other  instances  the  conditions  which 
give  rise  to  the  experience  are  not  so  stable,  and  are 
interfered  with  by  the  act  of  attention  itself;  then 
there  is  a  second  limit.  But  if  we  can  get  the  fact 
of  experience  on  the  wing  in  terms  of  primary 
memory,  before  it  has  had  time  to  fade  away,  it 
still  belongs  essentially  to  the  “present  moment”; 
and  certainty  may  be  equally  attainable. 

There  is,  however,  an  obscurity  here  which  still 
needs  to  be  cleared  up ;  and  while  it  will  mean  again 
anticipating  in  part  conclusions  that  have  not  yet 
been  justified,  what  I  have  to  say  will  perhaps  be 
sufficiently  intelligible.  Although  I  have  said  that 
I  may  be  certain  under  the  conditions  described, 
these  conditions  hardly  as  yet  are  quite  consistent 
with  the  definition  of  self-evidence.  This  last  im¬ 
plicitly  involves  a  conception  of  “truth”;  and,  as 
I  shall  argue  more  at  length  presently,  the  only  way 
I  am  able  to  define  truth  for  myself  is  in  terms  of  a 
correspondence  between  idea  and  reality.  If  then  the 
situation  is  such  that  the  object  of  knowledge  is 
present  in  person  without  the  mediation  of  an  idea, 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


36 

how  can  we  speak  of  a  judgment  that  is  self-evi¬ 
dently  true? 

The  point  of  such  a  criticism  I  should  admit. 
Though  any  content  of  which  I  am  aware  is  just 
that  content  of  which  I  am  aware,  and  is  recognized 
as  such,  the  “certainty”  that  may  be  a  consequence 
of  this  immediate  apprehension  is  not  the  bare  recog¬ 
nition  itself,  but  involves  the  truth  of  a  judgment. 
And  I  should  hesitate,  in  spite  of  having  spoken  of 
it  as  a  “known”’  fact,  to  call  the  immediate  attentive 
awareness  of  red  a  judgment,  or  a  truth.  It  still 
seems  to  me  that  we  can  speak  of  a  “true”  judgment 
only  where  there  is  duality  involved,  and  something 
is  accepted  as  corresponding  to  an  “idea”  of  it. 

And  I  should  get  rid  of  the  apparent  discrepancy 
by  holding  that  the  immediately  apprehended  fact 
becomes  a  “truth”  only  when  we  pass  a  secondary 
judgment  about  it.  In  strictness,  the  truth  is  not  the 
immediate  recognition  of  the  content,  but  the  asser¬ 
tion  that  it  is  as  recognized.  That  a  given  intuitional 
apprehension  is  true,  means  that  a  given  descrip¬ 
tion  of  the  content  is  a  correct  one — that  I  was  not 
mistaken  or  confused  in  my  analysis,  and  so  that  the 
statement  does  really  represent  the  fact;  and  the 
testing  is  dependent  on  our  ability  to  repeat  the 
analysis  or  inspection,  and  so  scrutinize  the  (im¬ 
mediately  known)  fact  to  see  if  anything  has  been 
attributed  to  it  which  was  not  actually  there.  On 
this  reexamination,  accordingly,  the  possibility  of 
rational  certainty  depends.  An  introspective  judg- 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


37 


ment  may  plainly  be  inadequate.  And  therefore  it 
should  not  set  up  too  hasty  a  claim  to  self-evidence, 
since  no  untested  belief,  however  strong,  has  any 
way  of  being  assured  that  it  may  not  be  among 
those  beliefs  which  seem  to  be  true,  but  are  mis¬ 
taken. 

And  all  intuitional  truths  capable  of  certainty 
appear  to  me  to  be  of  this  sort.  They  are  statements 
of  what  we  actually  discover  to  be  the  fact  about 
our  mental  content  at  the  moment;  and  they  are 
self-evidently  true  statements  in  so  far  as  they  con¬ 
tinue  to  seem  with  entire  clearness  an  accurate  ac¬ 
count  after  repetition  and  the  closest  scrutiny  we  can 
give.  Not  every  description  of  content  by  any  means 
is  self-evident  in  this  sense ;  and  there  seems  no  way 
of  ruling  off  a  definite  sphere  within  which  self- 
evident  truths  lie.  But  in  some  cases  the  thing  is  so 
extremely  clear  that  we  refuse  to  admit  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  mistake.  An  element  of  content  has  usually 
to  be  relatively  simple  for  this  maximum  of  cer¬ 
tainty  to  exist — how  simple  depends  both  on  the 
nature  of  the  circumstances,  and  on  the  familiarity, 
expertness,  and  mental  grasp  of  the  person  judging. 
Of  course  in  any  case  it  is  theoretically  open  to  con¬ 
ceive  that  I  may  be  mistaken  in  my  use  of  words.  But 
the  content  whose  identity  I  am  really  conscious  of 
meaning  is  indubitable,  because  the  thing  that  I 
am  aware  of  is  just  what  it  is  and  nothing  else.  If  I 
compare  a  red  and  a  green  patch  of  color,  and  make 
about  them  the  judgment  that  they  differ,  I  feel 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


38 

absolutely  sure  that  I  cannot  be  wrong.  The  judg¬ 
ment  simply  identifies  a  relationship  at  the  moment 
present  to  me. 

Of  the  two  forms  of  self-evident  intuition  al¬ 
ready  distinguished,  it  is  the  one  concerned  with 
the  “what”  rather  than  with  the  “that”  of  our 
conscious  content  which  is  the  source  of  the  only 
truths  particularly  important  for  philosophy.  And 
among  these  meanings  or  descriptions,  the  more 
significant  are  cases  not  of  qualities,  but  of  “rela¬ 
tional”  ideas.  It  is  to  this  last  category  that,  as  I 
see  it,  all  axioms  belong,  as  the  word  has  tradition¬ 
ally  been  most  often  understood.  These  represent 
primarily  descriptive  truths  about  our  intellectual 
content  or  meaning.  If  I  say  that  two  straight  lines 
cannot  inclose  a  space,  I  see  no  ground  for  this 
except — and  it  is  a  quite  sufficient  ground — the  im¬ 
mediate  perception  I  have  of  the  nature  of  my  spa¬ 
tial  experience,  and  the  felt  incompatibility  be¬ 
tween  the  two  sets  of  conditions.  That  things  equal 
to  the  same  thing  are  equal  to  each  other  depends, 
again,  on  a  direct  perception  of  the  lack  of  difference 
under  the  conditions  specified;  I  cannot  doubt  it 
when  I  once  recognize  the  exact  character  of  my 
meaning  in  the  judgment.  Here  belongs  also,  it 
should  be  noted,  the  case  of  logical  necessity.  This 
rests  on  the  immediate  perception  that  a  certain  mat¬ 
ter  of  content  is  actually  present  as  a  part  of  my 
meaning  in  previous  statements;  and  the  “principle” 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


39 


of  deduction  is  just  a  generalization  of  the  situation 
thus  directly  perceived. 

If  accordingly  we  continue  to  talk  about  the  self¬ 
evidence  of  an  axiomatic  truth,  it  is  of  course  essen¬ 
tial  that  we  confine  it  to  these  narrow  descriptive 
limits,  and  do  not  extend  its  application  unduly.  An 
extension  might  take  either  of  two  forms — that  the 
perceived  relationship  always  holds,  or  that  it  holds 
of  a  reality.  The  first  claim,  when  it  is  legitimate, 
depends  simply  upon  the  will  to  keep  our  meanings 
fixed,  and  allow  no  conditions  to  enter  except  those 
under  which  we  perceive  the  self-evident  relation¬ 
ships.  If  I  discover  something  true  about  the  angles 
of  a  triangle,  I  believe  that  it  will  be  true  always, 
and  not  merely  in  the  particular  case  where  it  was 
demonstrated,  because,  since  a  triangle  is  by  defini¬ 
tion  constructed  in  just  one  way,  I  can  count  always 
on  the  same  circumstances  as  those  that  were  essen¬ 
tial  to  the  demonstration;  the  only  need  I  have  for 
additional  examples  is  to  verify  my  conviction 
that  the  necessary  conditions  are  in  reality  no  more 
and  no  less  than  triangularity.  I  could,  if  I  chose, 
adopt  the  same  attitude  toward  all  propositions,  and 
make  them  universal  by  the  simple  device  of  giving 
fixity  of  meaning  to  my  words.  This  however  is 
puerile,  and  represents  no  scientific  practice. 

And  it  calls  attention  to  the  second  point — that 
whenever  truths  profess  to  go  beyond  a  description 
of  the  meaning  implicit  in  our  mental  content,  and 
to  refer  to  things,  an  unavoidable  element  of  uncer- 


40 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


tainty  enters  in.  Any  assurance  I  may  have  about 
an  independently  existing  world  may  be  intuitive  in 
the  sense  that  it  is  simple,  immediate,  and  strongly 
self-confident;  but  it  can  never  be  self-evident ,  for 
the  reason  that,  as  such  a  world  never  is  directly 
identified  with  its  description  as  an  idea  in  my  mind, 
I  can  conceive  myself  mistaken  in  my  reference. 
Thus  geometry  is  certain  only  while  it  confines  itself 
to  the  abstract  world  of  space  relationships.  How¬ 
ever  strong  my  conviction  that  it  truly  applies  also 
to  an  existent  world  of  things,  this  rests  upon  an 
assumption,  and  is  not  self-evident.  Mill  has  been 
frequently  reproved  for  his  suggestion  that  two  and 
two  might  possibly  make  five;  but  taken  as  appar¬ 
ently  it  was  intended,  I  see  nothing  against  the  sup¬ 
position.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  the  world  might 
be  so  constituted  that  whenever  to  two  things  an¬ 
other  two  were  added,  five  things  would  at  once 
appear;  this  is  in  principle  the  sort  of  thing  that 
does  happen  regularly  in  the  conjuror’s  world.  When 
it  is  a  question  about  the  way  real  things  are  going 
to  work,  then  the  theoretical  possibility  of  a  new 
and  totally  surprising  result  will  always  have  to  be 
allowed  for. 

The  only  thing  that  may  seem  to  complicate  the 
foregoing  account  is  the  case  of  so-called  logical 
truths  which  appear  not  to  be  directly  present  in 
the  premises,  but  which  come  as  an  unforeseen  dis¬ 
covery.  In  formal  deduction  nothing  new  can  come 
out  of  the  premises;  whereas  in  mathematics,  for 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


4i 


example,  we  are  constantly  advancing  to  truths  that 
are  a  surprise  and  revelation  to  the  discoverer.  But 
how  could  the  truth  be  tucked  away  where  no 
examination  of  the  postulates  could  detect  it?  And 
if  it  was  not  there,  how  does  it  come  about  that  I  am 
able  to  make  the  discovery  by  a  process  that  goes 
on  simply  “in  the  mind”? 

But  the  true  source  of  novelty  here  has  appeared 
already.  The  new  truths  are  discovered  by  fresh 
intuitions ,  and  not  by  logic  at  all,  though  the  condi¬ 
tions  governing  the  exercise  of  intuition  may  be  set 
by  rules  that  are  logical  in  their  nature.  Suppose  I 
set  out  to  count  all  the  red-headed  people  I  meet  on 
the  street,  or  all  of  my  acquaintances  whose  names 
begin  with  A.  The  result  may  be  said  after  a  fashion 
to  depend  upon  a  plan  of  action,  or  “proposition,” 
which  “generates”  it,  while  still  representing  a  new 
bit  of  knowledge  not  actually  contained  in  the 
“premises.”  But  it  also  is  evident  that  the  act  of 
counting  would  be  empty  were  it  not  on  the  one 
hand  for  a  world  of  reality  presupposed  by,  but  not 
in  any  sense  contained  in,  my  formula  of  action, 
and,  on  the  other,  for  the  specific  acts  of  perception 
through  which  it  furnishes  me  the  material  for 
counting.  Or  better  perhaps,  consider  the  novelist 
who,  starting  out  with  a  certain  type  of  character  in 
mind,  finds  himself  watching  it  unfold  “of  itself” 
as  it  comes  into  contact  with  imaginary  situations. 
We  start,  say,  with  the  assumption  of  egotism. 
With  just  the  abstract  notion  to  go  on,  and  no  con- 


42 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


crete  knowledge  of  the  world  in  detail,  we  should 
stop  where  we  began.  But  assuming  the  requisite 
knowledge  of  life,  and  then  setting  a  principle  of 
action  to  work  under  definite  surroundings,  in  the 
contact  of  motive  and  opportunity  new  relationships 
are  revealed,  and  the  mind  finds  itself  perceiving 
them,  and  following  them  to  a  conclusion  that  may 
well  have  been  unanticipated  at  the  start,  though 
when  it  emerges  we  recognize  it  as  convincing  and 
"necessary.55 

And  just  the  same  thing  may  also  take  place  in  a 
more  abstract  realm,  where  intuition  means,  not 
the  imaginative  perception  of  events  or  happenings, 
but  the  recognition  of  bare  relational  contents.  Thus 
the  mind  can  operate  on  space  qualities  apart  from 
physical  experience,  and  by  spatial  constructions  put 
itself  in  a  position  to  intuit  new  relations.  But  while 
in  a  sense  these  are  dependent  on  the  constructive 
process,  in  another  sense  this  process  is  merely  a  road 
to  the  independent  discovery,  by  an  act  not  logical 
but  immediate  and  intuitive,  of  facts  about  spatial 
reality. 

And  now  apart  from  such  an  assumed  field  of 
reality  in  the  background  which  supplies  material 
for  new  relations,  have  we  any  other  source  of 
"novel55  truth?  I  do  not  know  where  we  could  pos¬ 
sibly  look  for  it  unless  it  were  somewhere  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  "rules55  themselves,  as  distinct  from 
the  results  that  follow  from  setting  the  rules  to 
work  upon  a  subject-matter.  And  here  there  is  only 


THE  NATURE  OF  CERTAINTY 


43 


one  kind  of  “truth”  that  emerges,  so  far  as  I  am 
able  to  get  any  clear  notion  about  it.  I  am  proposing, 
we  will  say,  to  build  a  house,  and  I  want  to  get  a 
specified  number  of  rooms,  meet  certain  requirements 
of  taste  and  comfort,  use  reasonably  good  materials, 
and  expend  not  more  than  ten  thousand  dollars. 
These  constitute  my  original  conditions,  or  “propo¬ 
sitions,”  which  are  to  “generate”  the  plans.  And  in 
so  far  as  I  succeed  in  meeting  the  specifications,  I  get 
a  definite  architectural  result  which  is  new.  This 
however,  as  before,  means  only  that  I  am  manipu¬ 
lating  certain  material  of  knowledge — space  de¬ 
mands,  market  conditions,  and  the  like — in  assigned 
ways,  so  as  to  render  possible  new  discoveries  about 
its  relationships.  But  about  the  specifications  also 
I  discover  something  new — namely,  their  feasibility , 
or  the  possibility  of  their  being  actually  carried 
through.  The  thing  which  I  want  to  find  out, 
and  which  I  do  not  know  at  the  start,  is  whether  the 
different  conditions  can  be  combined  in  one  concrete 
outcome.  If  they  can,  then  I  have  learned  that, 
given  the  nature  of  the  world,  the  various  proposi¬ 
tions  are  compatible;  whereas  if  two  requirements — 
say  of  size  and  cost — can  by  no  possibility  both  be 
fulfilled,  they  are  said  to  be  in  contradiction.  But 
while  these  are  truths  about  the  conditions  them¬ 
selves,  they  are,  equally  with  other  truths,  dependent 
upon  the  nature  of  the  material  on  which  the  condi¬ 
tions  are  imposed,  and  so  upon  intuition. 

And  otherwise  it  looks  as  if  the  supposed  novelty 


44 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


must  always  be  contained  after  all  in  the  premises; 
if  we  overlook  it,  it  is  because  we  are  deceived  by 
the  complexity  of  the  facts.  We  can  in  a  complex 
system  turn  certain  perceived  relationships  into  rules 
of  procedure,  which  may  appear  to  lead  to  new  in¬ 
formation.  Thus  a  library  classification  helps  us  find 
a  book  of  whose  location  we  might  be  unaware.  But 
evidently  here  the  rule  is  only  a  rule  for  putting 
one’s  hands  upon  something  without  a  previous 
knowledge  of  which,  by  someone,  the  rule  would 
have  no  meaning;  it  works  only  because  I  can  pre¬ 
suppose  a  system  which  already  contains  all  the 
facts,  though  this  may  be  too  complicated  for  me  to 
hold  in  mind  all  at  once. 


THE  NATURE  OF  BELIEF 


1HAVE  so  far  been  using  the  term  belief  without 
any  attempt  to  define  its  nature  very  strictly;  and 
while  this  may  seem  a  dangerous  method  in  phi¬ 
losophy,  it  is  one  that  in  the  present  instance  can 
scarcely  be  avoided  altogether.  No  one  can  advance 
a  single  step  in  inquiry  of  any  sort  without  exer¬ 
cising  the  right  to  believe,  and  without  presupposing 
therefore  that  he  is  well  enough  acquainted  with 
the  experience  of  believing  to  recognize  its  presence, 
whatever  his  success  or  failure  in  setting  forth  ex¬ 
plicitly  his  meaning.  Even  in  case  it  were  to  prove 
impossible  therefore  to  analyze  the  concept  further, 
I  should  still  claim  the  right  to  use  it,  especially 
since  I  find  everyone  about  me  using  it  without 
hesitation.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  term  is  one  of 
which  it  is  exceptionally  hard  to  give  a  satisfactory 
account ;  but  the  task  nevertheless  is  one  that  ought 
not  to  be  entirely  evaded. 

It  is  probably  safe  to  assume,  to  begin  with,  that 
the  content  of  belief  can  always  be  put  in  a  certain 
form — I  believe  that  something  is  so  and  so.  This 
may  prove  misleading,  however,  unless  we  notice 
that  such  a  form  of  statement  covers  two  possibili¬ 
ties  that  do  not  on  the  surface  seem  identical.  It 
suggests  in  the  first  instance  that  the  object  of  belief 
is  a  relationship  that  holds  between  two  terms — that 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


46 

green  is  other  than  pink,  or  that  the  Romans  con¬ 
quered  Gaul.  But  we  also  may,  if  we  choose,  change 
the  form  of  the  assertion  on  occasion,  and  may  say 
that  we  believe  in  something  which  is  not  a  relation¬ 
ship  or  a  “fact,”  but  a  “thing.”  I  believe,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  in  this  pen  which  I  now  hold  in  my  hand.  It  is 
true  that  I  am  equally  able  to  put  the  content  of 
this  last  belief  in  the  form  of  a  relational  proposi¬ 
tion,  and  to  say  that  I  believe  the  pen  is  real,  or  has 
existence.  But  unless  we  presuppose  that  “existence” 
is  itself  nothing  but  a  logical  term  or  concept  on  a 
par  with  any  other,  this  still  leaves  in  some  degree 
“belief  in”  distinguishable  from  “belief  that.”  And 
it  may  first  be  asked,  accordingly,  whether  it  is  a 
belief  in  “realities,”  or  a  belief  in  relational  con¬ 
nections,  that  throws  most  light  on  the  essential 
nature  of  believing. 

The  second  alternative  is  the  one  that  probably 
would  receive  the  approval  of  most  philosophers. 
There  are  two  reasons  however,  of  a  general  sort, 
which  lead  me  to  think  that  this  is  open  to  objection. 
In  the  first  place,  it  proceeds  on  an  assumption 
which,  though  it  is  very  widely  held,  appears  to  be 
out  of  harmony  with  certain  generally  accepted 
facts.  One  would  seldom  suspect,  from  a  reading  of 
the  major  part  of  even  recent  philosophical  litera¬ 
ture,  that  belief  is  concerned  essentially  with  any¬ 
thing  except  an  intellectual  analysis  of  content.  For 
the  empiricists,  this  content  is  sensational.  For  the 
opponents  of  empiricism  it  is  logical  or  dialectical. 


THE  NATURE  OF  BELIEF  47 

But  in  both  cases  alike  belief  has  no  intimate  and 
necessary  relation  to  the  practical  life,  and  the 
needs  of  the  animal  organism.  It  is  the  presumption 
of  the  objective  sciences,  however,  that  man  is  first 
of  all  an  animal.  And  if  this  is  so,  the  beginnings  of 
belief  will  most  naturally  be  looked  for  in  connec¬ 
tion,  not  with  a  disinterested  analysis  of  psychologi¬ 
cal  or  of  logical  data  out  of  which  objects  are  later 
and  in  a  secondary  way  built  up,  but  with  the  recog¬ 
nized  presence  of  actual  things  and  forces  on  the 
use  or  avoidance  of  which  survival  is  dependent. 
The  presumption  is  therefore  in  so  far  not  in  favor 
of  the  second  thesis. 

There  is  another  point  against  it  also.  It  may  seem 
an  over-refinement  of  language  to  say  that  I  perceive 
that  two  parallel  lines  never  meet,  instead  of  be - 
lieving  it.  But  in  the  field  of  ultimate  analysis  no 
distinction  is  too  small  to  be  safely  overlooked. 
And,  properly  interpreted,  the  distinction  appears 
to  be  a  valid  and  useful  one,  as  the  discussion  of  cer¬ 
tainty  has  already  shown.  Most  people  would  admit 
that  in  the  case  of  certain  knowledge  it  sounds,  on 
close  inspection,  a  little  strange  to  say  that  we  be¬ 
lieve  it.  We  know  it,  or  see  that  indubitably  it  is 
so;  belief  suggests  an  element  of  doubt  which  here 
is  lacking.  This  carries  a  suggestion  therefore,  at  any 
rate,  that  it  is  not  to  the  perception  of  relationships 
that  the  term  is  most  directly  relevant.  Meanwhile 
there  is  no  doubt  another  sense  in  which  the  state¬ 
ment  that  parallel  lines  never  meet  does  represent 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


48 

a  belief — when  we  are  thinking,  not  of  the  immedi¬ 
ate  perception  of  a  relationship,  but  of  the  projec¬ 
tion  of  this  relationship  into  the  world  as  an  ideal 
to  which  objects  are  going  to  live  up.  Here  indeed 
we  have  the  element  of  faith  which  makes  the  term 
belief  appropriate.  But  also  we  have  passed  from 
the  field  of  pure  logical  apprehension,  to  that  refer¬ 
ence  to  existents  which  is  involved  in  the  alternative 
conception. 

It  is  this  alternative,  therefore,  which  I  shall  take 
as  a  more  promising  starting  point ;  and  I  shall  pro¬ 
ceed  to  inquire  what  account,  if  any,  can  be  given 
of  the  act  of  believing  regarded  as  an  essential  re¬ 
quirement  of  survival.  Along  the  lines  of  the  English 
tradition  in  philosophy,  there  are  two  chief  sugges¬ 
tions  that  will  furnish  a  possible  line  of  attack. 
There  is,  to  begin  with,  what  tends  to  be  the  answer 
of  the  associationist  philosophy — that  belief  is  re¬ 
ducible  to  an  expectation  of  the  future  appearance 
of  some  familiar  mental  content.  Taken  as  it  stands, 
however,  this  is  an  evasion  of  the  issue.  It  might 
perhaps  account  for  what  we  believe.  But  it  is  not 
obviously  an  answer  to  the  question,  In  what  does 
believing  as  an  experience  itself  consist4?  At  best  it 
reduces  belief  to  expectation ;  and  only  by  ruling  out 
arbitrarily  a  considerable  portion  of  the  commonly 
recognized  content  of  belief  can  this  identification 
be  maintained.  And  even  if  we  were  to  regard  it  as 
the  only  form  that  belief  takes,  the  essential  point 
that  makes  it  a  belief  would  still  remain  unac- 


THE  NATURE  OF  BELIEF 


49 


counted  for  in  the  analysis.  All  that  association  by 
itself  supplies  is  the  fact  that  one  content  follows 
another  into  consciousness,  plus  the  possible  memory 
of  this  same  connection  in  the  past;  and  neither 
singly  nor  in  combination  do  these  amount  to  an 
expectant  belief.  Instead  of  finding  an  explanation 
of  belief  in  expectation,  expectation  itself  must  wait 
upon  a  theory  of  belief  for  its  understanding. 

The  second  suggestion  toward  a  theory  of  belief 
is  a  more  distinctive  and  promising  one.  Made  in  the 
first  instance  by  Professor  Bain,  less  as  itself  a  suffi¬ 
cient  account  of  the  matter  than  as  an  element  in  a 
considerably  more  complicated  theory,  it  attracted 
general  attention,  only  to  be  repudiated  later  on  by 
its  author.  It  has  however  repeatedly  been  revived 
by  subsequent  thinkers,  though  usually  without 
much  attempt  to  meet  the  specific  difficulties  in¬ 
volved.  Here  the  essence  of  belief  is  found  in  a 
“preparedness  to  act.”  This  has  at  least  the  very 
considerable  merit  that  it  abandons  a  purely  intel- 
lectualistic  explanation,  and  brings  belief  into  con¬ 
nection  with  the  active  life  process.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  form  in  which  Bain  left  it,  there  is  an 
apparent  lack  of  identity  between  the  theoretical 
analysis  and  the  testimony  of  concrete  experience. 
However  close  the  connection  with  action  may  be — 
and  it  seems  difficult  to  escape  a  feeling  that  some 
connection  exists — the  mere  sense  of  active  move¬ 
ment,  or  of  a  readiness  to  act,  is  not  all  we  mean 
by  having  a  belief ;  we  have  only  to  compare  the  two 


50 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


things  to  see  plainly  that  they  are  not  the  same.  Be¬ 
lief  unquestionably  has  an  intellectual  content 
which  the  mere  feeling  of  movement  does  not 
supply. 

It  is  not  however  impossible,  it  might  be  urged, 
to  remedy  this  lack,  and  to  import  an  intellectual 
content  also  into  the  same  general  situation  which 
a  “preparedness  to  act”  implies.  The  defect  of  the 
alternative  to  which  Bain  himself  was  led — the  re¬ 
duction  of  belief  to  the  expectation  of  an  associated 
experience  to  come — has  already  been  set  forth.  But 
if  we  were  to  substitute  instead  the  recognition,  not 
necessarily  a  very  explicit  recognition,  of  an  end 
that  is  being  served,  or  of  an  object  felt  to  be  related 
to  a  teleological  process,  we  should  be  in  some  sense 
in  connection  again  with  the  “activity”  aspect  which 
Bain  tried  to  introduce.  It  might  accordingly  be  sug¬ 
gested,  as  a  possible  hypothesis,  that  belief  consists, 
not  in  movement  itself,  but  in  the  intellectual  rec¬ 
ognition  of  the  teleological  situation  which  organic 
movement  implies — a  recognition  of  the  presence  of 
objective  conditions,  namely,  such  as  bear  a  causal 
relationship  to  the  expression  of  impulse  or  desire. 
To  “believe  in”  a  perceived  object  would  be,  then, 
to  realize  this  relation  of  the  object  to  the  active 
attitude  which  the  body  assumes  with  reference  to 
it. 

I  am  disposed  to  regard  such  a  thesis  as  to  a  cer¬ 
tain  extent  on  the  right  track.  But  as  it  stands  it 
suffers  from  a  fatal  defect.  In  saying  that  I  recog- 


THE  NATURE  OF  BELIEF 


nize  an  object  as  a  condition  of  organic  activity,  I 
am  already  implying  that  this  object  is  an  object  of 
belief.  That  is  to  say,  the  content  to  which  belief 
has  been  reduced  is  still  no  more  than  intellectual 
content,  unless  it  be  recognized  not  only  as  figuring 
in  the  logical  description  of  a  purposive  situation — 
if  this  were  all,  I  could  not  even  have  the  thought 
of  such  a  situation  without  also  believing  in  it — but 
as  a  reality ,  an  actually  existing  circumstance  which 
conduct  has  to  take  into  account.  The  moment  I 
begin  talking  of  “reality,”  however,  I  presuppose 
already  the  presence  of  belief.  There  must  be  some 
further  account  therefore  of  the  difference  between 
a  condition  of  action  which  is  merely  possible  or 
thinkable,  and  one  that  also  is  conceived  as  actual. 

But  while  bare  action  on  the  one  side,  and  the  in¬ 
tellectual  recognition  of  objective  conditions  of  ac¬ 
tion  on  the  other,  are  neither  of  them  sufficient  to  de¬ 
scribe  belief,  it  is  not  impossible  that  if  we  take  the 
two  together  they  may  prove  more  adequate.  Action, 
overt  or  incipient,  is  not  believing.  The  thought  of 
a  means  to  or  a  condition  of  action  is  not  believing, 
since  it  may  remain  a  mere  thought.  But  it  seems 
open  to  conjecture  that  the  sense  of  difference  which 
we  feel  between  such  a  mere  thought  or  fancy,  and 
the  belief  in  a  real  object,  may  have  its  source  in  the 
actual  release  of  energy  which  marks  the  beginning 
of  action.  Here  we  are  no  longer  attempting  to  re¬ 
duce  belief  to  movement  pure  and  simple.  We  do 
not  have  belief  unless  there  is  also  the  intellectual 


52 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


recognition  of  something  that  stands  in  relation  to 
the  process  of  active  life.  And  the  final  touch  which 
converts  this  into  belief  is  itself  also  a  conscious 
feeling.  But  the  source  of  such  a  feeling  may  never¬ 
theless  be  the  presence  of  an  incipient  release  in  the 
direction  of  attainment,  through  the  removal  of 
organic  checks  to  action. 

An  examination  of  the  belief  situation  gives,  I 
think,  some  plausibility  to  this  hypothesis.  As  we 
descend  in  the  scale  of  life,  the  release  of  action  in 
the  presence  of  the  object  tends  to  be  immediate 
and  instinctive,  and  the  intellectual  content  only  of 
the  vaguest  sort;  here  it  would  generally  be  agreed 
that  belief  is  hardly  a  proper  name  to  apply.  As  a 
distinctive  experience,  belief  arises  only  after  a 
period  of  doubt  and  hesitation  has  given  rise  to  some 
recognition  of  the  conditions  to  be  met,  and  has 
made  us  acquainted  with  the  difference  between 
action  arrested  and  action  released.  Its  emergence 
into  consciousness  is  at  least  coincident,  therefore, 
with  the  removal  of  checks  upon  freely  moving 
action;  and  it  seems  the  most  natural  thing  to  find 
a  causal  relation  here  as  well.  This  would  mean  in 
the  first  place  that  the  source  of  belief  is  subcon¬ 
scious  and  organic — a  thesis  which  experience  will 
verify.  We  do  not  choose  to  believe;  we  find  our¬ 
selves  believing.  And  it  seems  a  fair  description  of 
the  fact  to  say  that  we  find  ourselves  feeling  free 
to  pass  on  now  to  the  attainment  of  ends  which 
have  temporarily  been  held  up.  I  say  that  we  feel 


THE  NATURE  OF  BELIEF 


53 


free  to  pass  on,  for,  in  the  second  place,  it  is  in  this 
sense  of  there  being  no  hindrance  in  our  path,  rather 
than  in  the  actual  pursuit  of  active  ends,  that  belief 
consists;  it  is  a  conscious  and  intellectual  rather  than 
a  conative  sort  of  experience,  and  belongs  to  the 
stage  when  we  are  contemplating  rather  than  doing. 
I  do  not  feel  quite  certain  about  the  natural  descrip¬ 
tion  of  our  state  of  mind  where  conduct  is  actually 
moving  forward.  I  imagine  it  would  often  be  truer 
here  to  say  that  belief  is  implied,  rather  than  that 
it  actually  is  present.  But  since  overt  action  may  be 
accompanied  also  by  a  continued  intellectual  recog¬ 
nition  of  its  conditions,  the  matter  is  not  one  of  great 
theoretical  importance,  and  we  might  expect  to  find 
the  situation  descriptively  uncertain. 

In  what  has  just  been  said,  I  am  not  intending  to 
deny  that  there  may  be  cases  of  belief  which  are  not 
preceded  by  an  actual  period  of  initial  doubt.  The 
essential  point  is  not  that  in  every  belief  action  must 
first  be  restrained  by  indecision,  but  that  belief  be¬ 
longs  to  an  intellectual  stage  which  is  not  itself  overt 
action,  but  a  state  of  readiness  to  act,  with  the  at¬ 
tending  sense  of  an  open  path  ahead.  And  while 
genetically  this  implies  experiences  of  doubt  and 
hesitation  which  have  taught  us  the  advantages  of 
going  slow  and  looking  before  we  leap,  in  the  human 
animal  as  he  now  is  constituted  the  intellectual  life 
has  to  a  considerable  extent  severed  its  original  close 
connection  with  experimental  action,  and  numerous 
beliefs  come  to  us  from  our  nurture  and  surround- 


54 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


ings  which  we  never  stop  to  question.  Closer  inspec¬ 
tion  however  furnishes  ground  for  thinking  that 
facts  of  this  sort  are  themselves  favorable  on  the 
whole  to  the  thesis  that  belief  as  a  conscious  expe¬ 
rience  normally  implies  preceding  doubt  and  in¬ 
hibition.  For  it  is  notorious  that  when  a  so-called 
belief  comes  too  easily,  we  often  are  mistaken  about 
its  genuineness.  It  holds  the  mind  only  because  we 
have  had  no  occasion  to  put  it  into  practice;  and 
when  we  are  really  called  to  act  upon  it,  its  hollow¬ 
ness  and  insincerity  are  at  once  exposed. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


OR  “TRUENESS” 

IN  the  preceding  pages  I  have  constantly  presup¬ 
posed  a  certain  doctrine  which  at  the  present  day 
is  widely  disputed.  This  is  the  notion  of  truth  as  a 
correspondence  between  idea  and  reality.  I  propose 
in  the  present  section  to  make  an  attempt  to  justify 
this  more  fully. 

First  it  is  desirable  to  be  clear  about  what  it  is 
that  the  definition  tries  to  tell  us,  since  a  misunder¬ 
standing  here  has  sometimes,  it  is  likely,  prejudiced 
the  doctrine.  In  such  a  definition  we  are  not  at  all 
concerned  with  what  concretely  is  the  truth,  nor 
with  a  working  criterion  to  distinguish  truths  from 
falsehoods.  Perhaps  the  special  nature  of  the  prob¬ 
lem  can  be  suggested  by  saying  that  it  is  a  question 
about  the  definition  of  “trueness.”  Every  belief, 
that  is,  makes  a  claim  to  being  true;  what  does  it 
mean  abstractly  by  such  a  claim,  irrespective  of 
whether  or  not  the  claim  is  justified?  Thus  it  does 
not  for  our  present  purpose  make  the  slightest  dif¬ 
ference  whether  sense  qualities  like  sound  or  color 
really  belong  to  the  physical  world  or  not;  in  our 
unsophisticated  moods  we  believe  they  do,  and  the 
question  is  what  such  a  belief  implies  or  means. 
What  are  the  conditions  that  must  be  met  if  the 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


56 

belief  is  to  have  the  “trueness”  which  belief  always 
assumes  itself  to  have? 

I  shall  begin  by  distinguishing  four  elements  in 
the  knowledge  situation  which  an  empirical  analysis 
seems  to  reveal — distinctions  which  are  perfectly 
easy  to  draw,  and  which  all  alike  have  enough  ap¬ 
parent  claim  at  least  to  stand  for  facts,  to  put  the 
burden  of  proof  upon  the  one  who  shall  reject  them. 
First,  there  is  the  object  perceived,  the  real  thing 
with  its  status  in  the  world  of  reality  independent 
of  the  knowledge  relation.  This  various  traditional 
theories  of  knowledge  have  persistently  tended  to 
ignore  or  to  deny,  but  evidently  only  at  the  cost  of 
a  sharp  break  with  normal  human  belief. 

Over  against  the  object  stands  a  second  fact, 
which  common  sense  also  in  the  past  has  been  ac¬ 
customed  to  accept,  and  to  think  of  as  an  independ¬ 
ent  and — in  a  specified  sense  of  the  term — subjec¬ 
tive  entity,  belonging  to  the  realm  of  psychological 
experience — the  “state  of  consciousness,”  or  the 
psychical  state,  as  an  existent.  Here  again  we  have 
a  sort  of  fact  that  is  nowadays  not  universally  ad¬ 
mitted;  and  it  will  be  a  part  of  my  task  to  defend 
it,  incidentally,  against  the  current  disposition  to 
extrude  it  from  the  universe.  But  meanwhile  I  find 
no  excuse  for  anyone  pretending  that  he  does  not 
know  what  the  phrase  is  meant,  at  least  hypotheti¬ 
cally,  to  stand  for.  It  may  be  identified  summarily 
as  that  which  constituted  the  whole  stock  in  trade 
of  the  traditional  English  introspective  psycholo- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


57 

gists — the  bits  of  psychological  stuff  into  which  it 
was  their  business  to  analyze  the  conscious  life. 

About  the  next  point  there  is  more  excuse  for  mis¬ 
understanding;  but  recent  philosophy  in  particular 
has  made  some  sort  of  a  distinction  here  a  common¬ 
place.  It  concerns  what  in  familiar  language  may  be 
called  our  “meanings”  or  “ideas.”  A  real  possibility 
of  confusion  lies  in  the  fact  that  “meanings”  have 
two  different  aspects,  which  it  will  be  one  main  pur¬ 
pose  of  what  follows  to  try  to  adjust.  On  the  one 
hand,  a  meaning  is  distinctly  “our”  meaning;  it  be¬ 
longs,  that  is,  in  some  sense  to  the  realm  of  psycho¬ 
logical  experience.  We  talk  about  our  “ideas,”  in  the 
sense  of  the  traditional  psychology,  as  events  in  the 
stream  of  consciousness  with  a  particular  existential 
locus.  But  on  the  other  hand  a  meaning,  from  a  dif¬ 
ferent  angle,  does  appear  to  have  a  non-psychologi- 
cal  objectivity.  It  is  always  on  the  point  of  breaking 
loose  from  its  local  embodiment  in  the  psychical 
series.  When  we  subject  it  to  ordinary  psychological 
introspection  it  tends  to  elude  us,  leaving  us  simply 
with  the  “image”;  and  between  the  image,  a  plain 
psychological  existent,  and  the  meaning,  there  is, 
however  close  the  connection,  no  identity.  Indeed 
the  meaning  seems  to  belong  rather  to  the  object 
than  to  the  image;  it  is  the  object’s  nature,  or  “es¬ 
sence.”  Or  it  may  even  claim  a  status  as  a  timeless 
entity,  inhabiting  a  logical  world  of  its  own  inde¬ 
pendent  of  any  attachments;  thus  we  may  speak  of 
it  as  the  “same”  meaning  no  matter  who  thinks  it, 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


58 

and  no  matter  to  what  particular  object  it  is  re¬ 
ferred,  or  whether  it  is  referred  at  all. 

The  fourth  distinction  is  that  of  the  “mental  act.” 
This  is  a  concept  confessedly  obscure.  But  whatever 
the  interpretation,  it  seems  tolerably  clear  that  there 
is  something  for  which  the  expression  stands,  worthy 
of  entering  into  a  complete  analysis.  Without  an 
element  of  “activity,”  we  do  not  get  the  complete 
fact  that  experience  seems  to  present;  psychological 
states  become  a  bare  disjointed  string  of  Humian 
bits  of  mind  stuff,  and  “meanings”  an  unchanging 
skeleton  world  of  logical  abstractions,  or  Platonic 
ideas. 

There  is  not  intended  to  be  anything  abstruse  in 
the  foregoing  analysis,  and  if  there  has  seemed  to 
be,  I  can  perhaps  dispel  the  impression  by  translat¬ 
ing  it  into  a  concretion.  I  recall  or  think  about  my 
dinner  of  yesterday.  Here  there  is,  first,  the  dinner 
itself,  an  actual  experience  of  eating  which  is  now 
past  and  done  with,  and,  therefore,  not  now  to  be 
discovered  as  an  actual  presence.  The  ideal  content 
of  this  past  experience  however,  its  “character,”  or 
“nature,”  or  “essence,”  is  present  for  me  now  in  the 
focus  of  my  attentive  consciousness  as  an  idea  or 
meaning.  Distinguishable  from  this,  again,  is  the 
imagery  which  may  be  said  somehow  to  “carry”  the 
meaning — a  species  of  psychological  fact  which  dif¬ 
fers  from  the  latter  in  that  I  am  unaware  of  it  at  the 
moment  of  remembering,  but  which  examination 
reveals  as  actually  having  been  present,  whether  as 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


59 


visual,  gustatory,  verbal  or  what  not,  being  rela¬ 
tively  unimportant  to  the  significance  of  the  memory 
itself.  And,  finally,  over  and  above  all  these  aspects, 
singly  or  collectively,  is  the  fact  that  I  a?n  remem¬ 
bering ,  or  the  “act”  of  memory.  There  may  be  a 
reasonable  doubt  about  the  interpretation  of  some  or 
all  of  these  aspects.  But  that  each  of  them  stands 
for  so?nething  that  the  plain  man  can  easily  identify 
as  a  part  of,  or  as  directly  involved  in,  the  total  fact 
he  is  familiar  with  as  the  thinking  of  a  past  event, 
I  do  not  believe  can  fairly  be  disputed. 

I  am  now  in  a  position  to  state  in  a  preliminary 
way  what  I  consider  to  be  the  nature  of  an  act  of 
belief  on  the  side  of  its  claim  to  truth.  And  as  per¬ 
ception  is  the  original  form  of  that  which  takes  it¬ 
self  as  knowledge,  and  is,  besides,  the  storm  center 
of  the  epistemological  controversy,  it  will  form  the 
natural  starting  point  for  the  inquiry.  Perceptual 
experience,  then,  is  a  process  of  recognizing,  im¬ 
plicitly,  a  certain  character  or  essence  as  belonging 
to  an  object,  or  to  a  real  existent.  This  existent  is 
something  not  itself  immediately  apprehended;  it 
does  not  enter  literally  in  its  bodily  presence  into 
the  flow  of  direct  psychological  experience  where 
knowing  is  located.  The  real  chair  which  I  see,  no 
more  than  the  real  dinner  which  I  remember,  is 
identical  with  anything  that  at  the  moment  is  an 
“experienced,”  as  distinct  from  a  “known,”  fact. 
For  one  thing,  if  in  knowledge  the  actual  object 
were  literally  inclosed  within  the  experience  which 


6o 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


knows  it,  it  would  be  bound  in  so  far  to  exist  pre¬ 
cisely  as  it  is  known,  and  error  would  be  impossible. 
Consequently,  as  opposed  to  subjectivism,  the  “ex¬ 
istence55  to  which  knowledge  refers  must  be  postu¬ 
lated  as  having  a  life  of  its  own,  untouched  by,  and 
existentially  independent  of,  the  knowledge  process. 

On  the  other  hand  the  specific  dress — the  complex 
of  qualities  and  relations — in  which  for  knowledge 
the  object  is  clothed,  must  somehow  be  immediately 
grasped,  or  intuited,  or  apprehended,  or  given.  The 
true  object  of  knowledge  cannot  accordingly  be 
understood  except  in  terms  of  an  intimate  union  of 
two  aspects.  In  its  construction  we  have  to  distin¬ 
guish  two  separate  processes  or  phases — the  appre¬ 
hension,  or  direct  presence  in  psychological  experi¬ 
ence,  of  the  character  or  essence  which  describes  it, 
and  the  outgoing  reference  which  locates  this  as  an 
attribute  of  an  independently  real  world.  The  fun¬ 
damental  defect  of  neo-realism — and,  I  believe  also, 
of  objective  idealism — is  that  it  stops  with  the  char¬ 
acter  apprehended,  and  so  turns  existence  into  logic 
— a  complex  of  attributes  or  “data.55  In  point  of 
fact  what  we  do  when  we  “see55  an  apple  is  not 
merely  to  have  a  complex  awareness  of  redness, 
roundness  and  the  like;  this  redness  and  roundness 
we  feel  as  really  existing  out  there  as  the  qualities 
of  an  actual  “thing,55  where  the  thinghood  or  exist¬ 
ence  is  not  itself  reducible  to  apprehended  charac¬ 
ters  of  which  we  are  aware  in  the  same  way  that  we 
are  aware  of  redness.  On  the  other  hand,  the  neo- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


61 


realists  are  unquestionably  right  in  holding  that 
these  “characters”  are  truly  objective,  in  the  sense 
that  they  are  not  sensations  or  mental  states.  An 
apple  is  not  a  collection  of  my  sensations  and 
images;  nor  do  I  attribute  sensations  to  it  as  its 
qualities.  At  the  moment  of  perceiving,  no  reference 
to  the  mental  is  present  to  my  mind  at  all.  The  con¬ 
tent  which  specifies  or  describes  the  particular  kind 
of  reality  I  am  in  contact  with  is  a  complex  of  purely 
abstract,  logical,  and  therefore  non-existent  entities; 
it  is  made  up  not  of  red  and  round  sensations,  but 
of  redness  and  roundness. 

And  yet  from  a  different  standpoint  subjectivism 
also  has  something  to  say  for  itself.  For  while  it  is 
so  that  in  the  description  of  the  known  object  there 
is  no  question  of  a  red  sensation,  it  does  not  follow 
that  we  should  have  it  in  our  power  to  see  redness  in 
the  object  were  it  not  that  actually  physical  proc¬ 
esses  have  given  rise  to  red-sensations  in  our  personal 
experience,  so  that  we  can  somehow  utilize  such 
“mental”  facts  to  make  the  knowing  process  con¬ 
cretely  possible.  This,  as  I  have  said  before,  is  what 
in  appearance  at  least  we  find  to  be  the  case.  And  I 
propose  to  go  on  now  to  inquire  just  what  such  a 
claim  will  involve.  More  specifically,  I  wish  to  con¬ 
sider  the  exact  status  of  a  “meaning”  or  an  “es¬ 
sence,”  and  what  its  relation  is  alike  to  the  object, 
and  to  the  mental  state. 

I  have  said  that  an  essence  is  not  as  such  an 
existence.  It  is  rather  a  description ;  and  we  do  not 


62 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


refer  existences  to  the  real  world  as  its  describable 
“character.5 5  But  then  what  does  constitute  its  meta¬ 
physical  standing?  I  see  here  only  two  roads  open. 
On  the  one  hand  this  status  of  “non-existence55  may 
represent  an  ontological  fact,  in  the  sense  of  some¬ 
thing  like  a  realm  of  Platonic  ideas.  To  this,  with  its 
hypostasization  of  logic,  neo-realism  seems  inevita¬ 
bly  to  swing.  Or  else  non-existence  is  purely  a  mind- 
made  fact,  and  depends  upon  our  human  power  of 
abstraction. 

This  last  is  the  road  which,  in  so  far  at  least  as 
the  knowledge  situation  is  concerned,  I  prefer  to 
follow.  The  “character”  of  an  object  is  not  an  exist¬ 
ent,  simply  because  we  have  left  its  existence  out  of 
account  in  thinking  of  its  bare  descriptive  nature. 
There  seems  no  particular  difficulty  so  far;  all  we 
need  to  postulate  is  the  power  to  lend  attention  to 
partial  aspects  of  experience,  and  ignore  for  our 
selective  thought  the  rest.  If  we  were  asked  how  we 
arrive  at  the  description  of  an  apple,  for  example, 
assuming  now  the  “apple”  as  a  part  of  the  already 
accepted  world  of  real  things  to  which  we  react,  we 
should  naturally  say  that  we  note  by  the  abstracting 
eye  the  redness  of  the  apple,  the  taste,  the  shape, 
and,  ignoring  the  fact  that  these  are  embodied  in  a 
particular  existential  form,  we  hold  them  before 
the  mind  in  their  own  right  just  as  characters.  They 
really  do,  for  our  naive  belief,  belong  to  the  apple, 
exist  there — that  is  why  we  can  reassign  them  to  it 
objectively  as  its  very  nature.  But  also  we  can  think 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


63 

them  as  qualities  without  at  the  same  time  intending 
to  think  of  any  particular  instance  in  which  they 
really  inhere. 

But  while  the  status  of  the  essence  in  so  far  is 
not  particularly  abstruse,  whether  as  embodied  in 
the  object,  or  as  attended  to  in  abstraction  from  it, 
its  connection  with  the  process  of  perception  is  more 
difficult.  For  a  point  of  view  at  any  rate  which 
accepts  a  real  difference  between  psychical  and 
physical  existence,  the  presence  of  the  essence  in  the 
knowing  experience  cannot  be  accounted  for  merely 
in  terms  of  its  existence  in  the  object,  without  aban¬ 
doning  the  whole  distinction  between  the  real  world 
as  existing  and  the  world  as  it  enters  into  the  know¬ 
ing  state — without  leaving  out,  that  is,  the  human 
fact  of  knowing  altogether.  We  have  to  find,  accord¬ 
ingly,  an  embodiment  of  essences  not  in  things 
merely,  but  in  connection  with  the  human  knowl¬ 
edge  of  things  as  well.  And  such  a  point  of  attach¬ 
ment  has  already  been  recognized  in  the  preceding 
analysis;  somehow  they  are  “ideas  of  ours,”  which 
we  can  hold  before  the  mind  and  attribute  on  occa¬ 
sion  to  various  “things.”  I  have  however  granted  the 
impossibility  of  simply  identifying  this  meaning 
with  the  psychical  state;  what  then  are  we  to  take 
to  be  the  relationship  between  the  two  more  or  less 
discrepant  facts  ^ 

The  simplest  answer  seems  to  me  to  be  the  true 
one.  The  sensation  is  actually  there  as  an  existent 
psychical  fact,  though  we  are  not  aware  of  this  at 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH4? 


64 

the  time,  and  it  is  not  the  sensation  as  such  that  we 
refer  to  the  thing.  But  the  sensation  also,  like  the 
object,  has  a  certain  character,  or  an  essence.  And  as, 
in  viewing  an  object,  we  can  ignore  the  object’s 
existence  in  favor  of  its  qualities,  so  when  we  have  a 
sensation  it  is  possible  that,  without  any  reference 
whatever  to  the  fact  that  we  have  it,  or  to  its  exist¬ 
ence,  our  attention  may  automatically  be  held  by 
certain  special  characters  attaching  to  it,  which  we 
use  then  for  interpreting  the  extra-experiential  ob¬ 
ject  in  which  on  other  grounds  we  have  reason  to  be¬ 
lieve.  And  this,  I  suggest,  constitutes  the  experience 
of  cognitive  perception,  and  explains  the  ontological 
status  of  the  essence  in  human  belief.  Of  course  the 
same  explanation  would  equally  apply,  with  modifi¬ 
cations  to  be  noted  later,  to  non-sensuous  knowledge, 
where  the  “image”  would  take  the  place  of  the 
sensation. 

Before  going  on  to  justify  this  thesis  more  at 
length,  it  will  be  well  to  say  something  first  about 
the  other  aspect  of  the  knowing  process  that  has  been 
distinguished,  for  the  sake  of  getting  the  entire 
situation  before  us.  And  for  this  it  is  only  necessary 
to  turn  to  certain  facts  about  the  human  constitution 
which  are  a  matter  of  general  acceptance.  The 
foundation  of  essences  in  the  knowing  process  has 
been  located  in  the  variously  qualified  psychical 
experiences — color  sensations,  sound  sensations,  and 
the  like — which  arise  in  connection  with  the  action 
of  the  outer  world  on  the  organism  under  specifiable 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH  65 

conditions.  That  undulations  set  up  by  a  vibrating 
body,  and  impinging  on  the  sense  organ,  condition 
thus  the  appearance  of  sound  sensations  not  identi¬ 
cal  in  character  with  the  physical  changes  in  the 
nervous  substance,  is  to  be  accepted  because  we  find 
it  to  be  so. 

These  qualitative  effects,  however,  may  as  such  be 
called  passive;  and  if  they  stood  alone  they  would 
not  constitute  knowledge  at  all.  They  would  be  no 
more  than  transient  pulses  of  psychic  existence  of 
which  one  could  only  say  that  they  are.  But  the  or¬ 
ganism  has  another  and  more  aggressive  side.  It  is 
constituted  by  outward-going  impulses,  which  need 
for  their  expression  the  material  of  the  outer  world. 
And  this  relationship  of  active  tension  in  which  the 
organism  stands  to  the  world  which  it  finds  only  in¬ 
directly  amenable  to  its  own  purposes,  is  the  im¬ 
mediate  occasion  for  that  which  translates  itself  into 
the  inner  life  as  a  reference  to,  or  an  acceptance  of, 
a  real  extra-experiential  universe  of  existents.  It  is 
not  that  we  reason  to,  or  infer,  such  a  fact  beyond 
experience.  The  belief  is  rather  an  assumption  which 
we  make  by  instinct,  since  it  is  only  by  taking  for 
granted  that  we  are  in  relation  to  realities  on  which 
the  needs  of  life  depend  that  we  are  able  to  maintain 
ourselves  alive  at  all.  But  also  we  do  not  simply 
react  to  this  world;  we  have  an  intellectual  or  con¬ 
scious  recognition  of  its  being  there,  as  something  to 
be  taken  into  account.  The  nature  of  this  situation 
has  already  been  considered  briefly  in  what  I  have 


66 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


had  to  say  about  belief ;  and  I  shall  return  to  it  again 
a  little  later.  Meanwhile  that  it  is  so?nehow  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  life  of  organic  impulse  that  the 
reality  reference  arises  seems  to  me,  in  the  light  of 
all  we  know  about  the  world,  hardly  to  be  open  to 
reasonable  doubt;  and  an  account  of  knowing  which 
ignores  this,  and  which  tries  to  derive  all  that  is 
essential  in  knowledge  out  of  intellectual  or  non- 
practical  conditions,  is  necessarily  doomed  to  failure. 

If  however,  to  return  now  to  the  earlier  point,  we 
are  to  come  in  thus  for  some  practical  benefit,  it  is 
not  enough  that  we  should  merely  recognize  reality 
in  general ;  we  must  find  reality  clothed  with  certain 
specific  features,  in  case  our  recognition  is  to  help 
us  in  adopting  the  action  appropriate  to  any  situa¬ 
tion  in  particular.  We  must,  that  is,  qualify  reality 
by  distinguishable  predicates.  And  we  have  no  mate¬ 
rial  whatever  for  this  purpose,  except  in  the  form  of 
those  characters  which  we  directly  experience,  ulti¬ 
mately  through  the  effects  that  outer  objects  exert 
upon  the  organism.  We  cannot  characterize  existence 
except  in  experienced  terms,  which  means  in  terms 
of  the  essences  of  our  experienced  psychical  feelings. 
And  if  on  certain  occasions  we  are  led  to  react  at 
the  same  moment  that  we  find  ourselves  experienc¬ 
ing  a  sensation  of  redness,  why  should  we  not  auto¬ 
matically  characterize  the  existent  to  which  the 
reaction  points  by  redness,  and  so  have  a  mental  tool 
for  future  discriminations  in  conduct? 

This,  again,  distinctly  does  not  mean  that  we  first 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


67 

recognize  the  psychical  state  as  an  existent.  Rather 
what  is  presupposed  is,  that  while  the  psychical 
state  is  there  all  along,  all  that  comes  to  the  sur¬ 
face,  rises  to  our  attentive  consciousness,  is  one  or 
more  of  its  essences;  for  attention  these  are  given 
apart  fro?n  the  fact  of  their  psychical  embodiment, 
which  last  can  only  be  noted  by  a  second  introspec¬ 
tive  act  of  knowledge.  Normally  and  originally — 
for  until  it  happens  we  have  no  case  of  knowledge 
at  all — these  essences  are  present  to  our  awareness, 
or  are  “given,”  as  descriptive  not  of  sensation  but 
of  an  independent  object,  the  recognition  of  the 
object  being  due  once  more  to  the  practical  needs  of 
life,  which  force  us  to  take  account  of  what  we  find 
affects  us  for  weal  or  woe.  An  “object,”  therefore,  is 
constituted  by  a  group  of  the  characters  with  which 
psychological  experience  makes  us  familiar,  plus  the 
instinctive  sense  that  there  is  something  present  of 
which  we  have  to  take  account,  the  latter  aspect 
being  an  outcome  of  that  state  of  muscular  tension 
which  is  conditioned  by  our  nature  as  active  beings 
dependent  on  an  environing  world,  while  the  char¬ 
acters  are  used,  also  instinctively,  to  give  to  this  a 
specific  form.  Meanwhile  the  essence  as  such  is  the 
product  of  our  later  moments  of  reflection  when  we 
abstract  the  nature  of  the  object  from  its  existence 
or  thinghood — the  two  things  being  originally  given 
in  conjunction — and  direct  attention  to  this  just  as 
an  essence,  or  abstract  character,  or  universal. 

It  is  here,  I  may  note  in  passing,  that  the  ground 


68 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


exists  for  the  conclusion  that  true  knowledge  is  in 
terms  of  “correspondence.”  This  character  of  the 
psychical  state  which  the  mind  “intends”  in  its  ideas 
must  really  be  identifiable  with  the  character  of  the 
object  to  which  it  is  referred,  or  else  in  so  far  our 
knowledge  is  in  error;  and  if  the  essence  in  the  two 
cases  is  identical,  the  things  which  have  such  an 
identical  essence  “correspond.”  In  this  way  we  may 
answer  the  familiar  objection  that  if  by  definition 
an  object  lies  outside  experience,  there  is  no  method 
of  getting  hold  of  it  to  compare  it  with  the  mental 
state,  and  so  to  discover  the  correspondence.  Cor¬ 
respondence  is  discovered  not  in  the  original  act  of 
knowing,  which  is  a  unitary  act  of  reference  or 
identification,  but  through  a  subsequent  reflective 
thought,  to  which  both  the  terms  alike  are  on  the 
side  of  their  existence  external;  but  also  both  object 
and  mental  state  alike  are  now  present  in  idea,  that 
is,  in  their  essence,  and  so  can  be  compared.  This  of 
course  still  leaves  the  claim  to  correspondence  with¬ 
out  any  final  testing;  but  the  claim  nevertheless  re¬ 
mains  as  a  verifiable  part  of  any  natural  account  of 
knowledge,  with  an  origin  which  it  is  possible  to 
trace.  If  accordingly  we  wish  to  say  that  our  ideas 
“copy”  the  real  world,  we  must  be  careful  not  to 
imagine  that  there  is  an  original  in  knowledge  which 
the  idea  then  sets  itself  to  reproduce;  it  is  a  copy  if 
it  is  a  true  idea,  but  it  does  not  do  any  conscious 
copying.  Meanwhile  the  connection  with  reality 
which  belief  presupposes  is  not  dependent  on  a  rec- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


69 

ognition  of  this  correspondence.  It  is  direct  and  in¬ 
stinctive,  and  a  consequence  of  the  way  in  which,  not 
reality  merely,  but  reality  localized  and  particu¬ 
larized,  is  forced  upon  us  by  specific  practical  needs 
under  specific  conditions  of  their  satisfaction. 

In  terms  of  specific  qualities  of  sense,  at  least,  I 
think  that  the  foregoing  account  of  the  relationship 
between  essence  and  mental  state  is  sufficiently  sim¬ 
ple  not  to  need  further  laboring;  and  it  seems  a  per¬ 
fectly  natural  and  plausible  conception.  Evidently 
a  “red  sensation,”  as  a  psychical  existent,  is  neither 
identified  with  the  red  object,  nor  attributed  to  the 
red  object  as  its  quality;  it  is  redness  we  find  in  the 
existing  world.  But  how  could  we  ever  have  the 
meaning  “redness”  before  us  unless  we  had  some¬ 
how  experienced  redness  as  the  quality  of  an  actual 
psychical  stated  However,  if  we  pass  beyond  this 
simplified  situation  the  matter,  I  recognize,  is  not 
quite  so  plain;  there  are  a  number  of  explanations 
that  seem  called  for. 

To  introduce  the  first  of  these,  I  shall  find  it  con¬ 
venient  to  call  attention  to  begin  with  to  certain 
distinctions  involved  in  the  term  “meaning,”  which 
I  have  been  using  as  an  alternative  of  “essence.”  The 
first  distinction  is  that  between  meaning  in  its  active 
and  in  its  passive  sense — between  a  meaning  in  the 
mind,  and  having  this  meaning.  Here  the  only  ques¬ 
tion  has  to  do  with  the  descriptive  nature  of  this 
act  of  holding  a  meaning  before  the  mind.  I  have 
interpreted  it  as  an  attentive  awareness  of,  or  as 


70 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


attention  focussed  upon,  a  specific  character  present 
as  a  character  of  the  momentary  psychical  state. 

There  is  however  a  second  and  quite  distinguish¬ 
able  active  sense  attaching  to  the  word.  The  mean¬ 
ing  which  we  have  may  also  be  actively  referred  to 
an  external  object;  and  then  we  may  talk,  in  this 
new  sense,  of  “meaning  the  object,”  and  not  simply 
of  “having  a  meaning”  present  in  our  minds.  Both 
the  meaning  which  we  have,  as  a  particularized  con¬ 
tent,  and  the  act  of  attributing  this  content  to  some¬ 
thing  as  a  true  description  of  it,  are  equally  involved 
in  the  present  theory  in  an  indivisible  unity,  and 
they  must,  as  was  said  before,  be  united  to  get  the 
complete  object  of  knowledge  which  we  “mean.” 

It  is  a  third  ambiguity,  however,  that  is  chiefly 
important  for  my  present  purpose.  It  is  illustrated 
when  we  speak  of  the  meaning  of  a  word.  This  with¬ 
out  doubt  is  largely  responsible  for  confusing  the 
claim  that  for  true  knowledge,  when  this  professes 
at  all  to  be  concerned  with  the  nature  of  reality ,  an 
idea  must  be  an  adequate  “copy”  of  the  character  of 
the  thing.  There  is  no  such  correspondence  where  a 
word  is  concerned.  It  is  merely  that  we  find  it  use¬ 
ful  to  simplify  our  thinking  processes  by  substitut¬ 
ing  for  the  various  characters  of  reality  arbitrary 
signs.  And  the  sign  system  may,  without  corre¬ 
spondence,  be  “true,”  in  the  sense  that  we  can  sub¬ 
stitute  it  in  our  calculations  and  still  find  the  result 
coming  out  correctly.  And  this  symbolic  usage  is  not 
of  course  confined  to  verbal  signs.  Alike  in  terms 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


71 


of  thinking  and  of  conduct,  whenever  it  is  some 
practical  outcome  alone  that  interests  us,  anything 
that  will  enable  us  to  reach  our  goal  may  serve  to 
carry  our  meaning,  and  so  in  a  sense  constitute  valid 
knowledge. 

And  even  apart  from  the  use  of  arbitrary  signs, 
it  is  evident  that  between  the  meaning  and  the  men¬ 
tal  state  or  image  there  need  be  very  little  simi¬ 
larity;  there  may  even  be  a  sharp  discrepancy.  I  see 
a  round  table  as  round — roundness  is  a  part  of  its 
essence ;  my  image  meanwhile  may  have  the  essence 
“elliptical.”  So  perceived  distance — belonging  to 
the  object’s  essence — may  be  represented  in  the 
analysis  of  the  mental  state  by  characters  far  re¬ 
moved  from  its  real  nature.  And,  on  the  negative 
side,  imagery  is  notoriously  almost  certain  to  be 
minus  a  large  proportion  of  the  characters  belonging 
to  the  meaning  which  we  think. 

In  general,  the  explanation  is  that  the  presence 
of  meaning  in  the  active  life — of  thought  or  of  con¬ 
duct — is  largely  a  sense  of  definiteness  in  the  direc¬ 
tion  in  which  we  feel  ourselves  moving,  an  assurance 
that  we  are  on  the  right  track,  and  will  come  out  at 
a  point  where  some  specific  experience  will  greet  us 
as  winding  up  happily  and  successfully  the  active 
process.  This  might  possibly  account  for  such  a  thing 
as  “imageless  thought” — as  the  irradiation  from  a 
moving  equilibrium  whereby  felt  relationships  give 
rise  to  a  tingling  sense  of  terms  which  will  complete 
them,  even  before  these  arrive  in  person  on  the  scene. 


72 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


But  it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  present  an  adequate 
psychology  of  meaning — a  thing  which  I  am  far 
from  professing  myself  competent  to  do — since  for 
my  particular  purpose  the  question  is  a  relatively 
narrow  one.  Whatever  the  symbolic  function  of  the 
mental  state,  falling  short  of  correspondence,  the 
moment  we  come  back  to  the  special  aspect  of 
knowledge  in  which  alone  I  am  now  interested,  and 
consider  knowledge,  not  as  a  technique  for  attaining 
practical  or  theoretical  ends,  but  as  an  attempt  at  a 
mental  reconstruction  of  the  true  nature  of  any¬ 
thing,  we  find  the  notion  of  correspondence  inevita¬ 
bly  cropping  up  again.  We  can  use  words,  when  our 
meanings  are  sufficiently  fixed  and  we  are  become 
sufficiently  sure-footed,  or  we  can  use  any  other  form 
of  substitutory  image,  without  stopping  to  realize 
to  the  imagination  the  concrete  realities  for  which 
they  stand.  But  when  we  do  stop  to  realize  the  7nean - 
ing  of  our  words,  and  think  not  of  the  practical  end 
that  thought  for  the  moment  is  interested  in  reach¬ 
ing,  but  of  the  real  character  of  the  world  with 
which  our  thinking  deals,  we  are  led  to  recognize 
that  we  have  no  proper  imaginative  realization  of 
the  meaning  of  the  symbol  unless  we  are  capable  of 
translating  it  back  into  the  concrete  fact  of  which 
it  is  the  sign. 

And  an  idea  is  in  this  sense  true,  or  enables  us  to 
think  the  character  of  the  object  truly,  only  in  so  far 
as  it  has  itself  the  characteristics  of  the  thing  to 
which  it  professes  to  refer.  In  some  cases  this  seems 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


73 


to  me  so  evident  that  I  hardly  know  how  to  enforce 
it.  Suppose  I  am  trying  to  think  truly  the  character 
of  a  previous  sense  experience  of  redness.  Unless  I 
can  call  up  an  image  whose  redness  is  equivalent  to 
the  previously  experienced  redness,  or  can  get  a  new 
sensation  of  the  same  kind,  to  that  extent  I  fail  to 
have  any  realizing  sense  of  its  qualitative  nature,  in 
the  state  of  mind  in  which  I  am  just,  as  we  say, 
“thinking  about  it,”  though  the  defective  image 
may  still  serve  the  purpose  of  directing  me  in  the 
sort  of  conduct  for  which  its  object  calls.  Or  if  I 
try  to  “think”  another  man’s  feeling  of  fear,  I  only 
succeed  in  knowing  the  qualitative  “fear”  essence 
in  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  use,  directly  or  indirectly, 
in  “knowing”  it,  a  similar  concrete  experience  of  my 
own,  which  embodies  in  itself  the  same  quality  I 
need  to  have  before  my  mind  if  I  am  to  attribute  it 
to  another. 

And  the  same  situation  holds  of  beliefs  about  the 
nature  of  qualities  attributed  to  an  outer  world. 
Whether  or  not  redness  really  belongs  as  a  character 
to  things,  the  very  intelligibility  of  the  dispute 
itself  is  bound  up  with  the  thesis  that  I  have  had  an 
experience  characterized  by  the  quality  of  redness, 
and  that,  alike  when  I  assert  and  when  I  deny,  the 
experience  thus  qualified,  bodily  or  in  a  reproduc¬ 
tion,  is  implicated  in  my  judgment,  the  identity  or 
lack  of  identity  of  its  quality  with  the  character  of 
the  real  thing  being  the  only  point  at  issue.  When 
we  turn  from  sensations  to  relationships,  I  grant  in- 


74 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


deed  that  the  situation  is  hardly  so  straightforward  ; 
what  I  find  to  say  about  this  very  difficult  matter 
will  have  to  be  postponed  a  little  until  I  have  a 
chance  to  deal  with  relationships  more  explicitly. 
Meanwhile  on  general  grounds  it  is  hard  to  avoid 
supposing  that  the  essential  thesis  is  true  of  every 
character  attributed  to  the  real  world,  relationships 
as  well  as  qualities.  Unless  the  relationship  can  be 
translated  into  some  relational  experience ,  the  word 
is  seemingly  left  devoid  of  meaning;  and  apart  from 
the  supposition  that  just  the  character  thus  repre¬ 
sented  attaches  somehow  to  the  real  world  itself,  we 
should  have  no  ground  for  claiming  that  we  know 
the  relational  structure  of  this  world  at  all. 

That  the  total  image  is  usually  a  long  way  re¬ 
moved  descriptively  from  the  essence  of  the  object 
is,  I  repeat,  undoubted,  except  perhaps  for  those 
whose  type  of  imagery  is  notably  concrete  and  real¬ 
istic.  And  if  “copying”  needed  to  mean  a  photo¬ 
graphic  reproduction,  here  would  be  a  point  against 
the  copy  view  of  knowledge.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this 
apparently  is  presupposed  in  some  of  the  common 
objections  brought  against  such  a  theory.  The  total 
nature  of  the  image  is  however  usually  irrelevant. 
On  the  practical  side,  as  has  been  said,  it  makes 
little  difference  what  the  image  is  like  so  long  as  it 
carries  us  ahead;  and  even  when  we  are  bent  on 
stopping  to  realize  concretely  within  the  mental 
life  itself  the  true  nature  of  the  reality  about  which 
we  are  thinking,  we  shall  most  likely  be  compelled, 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


75 


provided  it  is  at  all  complex,  to  take  up  its  various 
characters  point  by  point  instead  of  as  a  whole.  All 
that  correspondence  signifies  is  that  any  particular 
feature  whose  true  nature  we  are  to  realize  con¬ 
cretely  must  be  ‘ 'embodied”  in  a  psychical  state, 
whatever  the  total  description  of  that  state  may  be; 
we  find  ourselves  balked  unless,  by  reviving  an 
image,  or  repeating  an  original  experience,  we  can 
actually  get  in  experience  the  quality  we  are  want¬ 
ing  to  assign  the  object  as  its  nature.  When  for 
example  we  begin  to  scrutinize  perceptual  qualities 
like  distance,  we  are  likely  in  the  “mental  state”  to 
discover  at  first  no  element  “corresponding”  to 
distance.  But  if  we  really  insist  on  realizing  what  we 
mean  by  distance,  we  shall  nevertheless  find  this  out 
of  our  power  except  as  we  are  able  to  appeal  to 
actual  experiences — perhaps  of  movement — which 
in  themselves  possess  characters  that  give  intelligi¬ 
bility  to  the  term. 

I  may  pass  now  to  a  second  and  more  technically 
significant  qualification  of  the  statement  that  in  true 
knowledge  the  essence  of  the  object  and  the  essence 
of  the  mental  state  are — potentially — identical. 
Both  object  and  mental  state  have,  as  existences , 
certain  characters  which  can  be  compared  either  not 
at  all,  or  only  in  a  carefully  qualified  sense.  For 
since  as  existents  the  two  are  sharply  distinct,  what¬ 
ever  belongs  to  one  by  virtue  of  its  separate  existen¬ 
tial  identity  it  will  be  unsafe  to  transfer  to  the 
other.  Thus  the  fleeting  character  of  the  image  does 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


76 

not  belong  to  the — in  most  cases — more  permanent 
character  of  the  thing.  And  more  particularly  from 
the  other  side — that  of  the  object — does  this  need 
to  be  recognized  in  order  to  evade  certain  plausible 
objections.  Thus  it  might  be  asked,  for  example, 
whether  a  thought  of  the  infinite  is  itself  infinite,  or 
whether  the  thought  of  an  object  independent  of 
experience  is  itself  thus  independent.  But  this  would 
be  to  forget  the  very  distinction  between  existence 
and  essence  on  which  the  theory  rests.  Of  course  the 
idea  does  not  have  the  existence  which  belongs  only 
to  the  object,  nor  is  it  able  to  perform  the  acts  which 
the  object  by  virtue  of  its  reality  is  able  to  perform. 
We  can  consistently  say  that  the  thought  of  activity 
is  not  itself  active;  the  idea  of  running  does  not  run. 
But  why?  Simply  because  running  is  an  occurrence 
in  the  existing  physical  world,  whereas  only  the 
timeless  essence  of  this  world  is  taken  up  into  the 
idea.  But  on  the  other  hand,  we  could  have  no  idea 
of  “running”  apart  from  some  actual  experience  of 
running  in  the  past,  which  now  is  utilized  in  imagi¬ 
nation,  and  its  descriptive  characters  attended  to. 

So  if  the  complex  character  of  “infinity”  implies 
also  an  aspect  of  actuality,  we  should  have  ground 
for  admitting  that  in  so  far  the  idea  of  infinity  is 
not  infinite,  though  this  idea  might  still  embody  the 
“essence”  infinity,  and  be  impossible  were  it  not  that 
the  essence  had  actually  qualified  experiences  of  my 
own  which  I  can  draw  upon  for  purposes  of  think¬ 
ing.  If  we  were  to  define  infinite  time,  for  example, 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


77 


in  the  traditional  way,  as  time  which  goes  on  with¬ 
out  ever  stopping,  it  would  not  be  necessary  for  our 
thinking  this  that  the  thought  also  should  go  on 
without  ever  stopping.  It  is  not  required  that  the 
thought  should  do  the  things  that  its  object  does. 
But  if  I  had  not  had  experiences  themselves  charac¬ 
terized  by  continuance  and  by  stopping,  as  well  as 
the  experience  of  finding  one  sort  of  event  not  the 
same  as  another,  I  should  certainly  be  unable  to 
think  the  possibility  of  a  “continuance  that  does  not 
stop.”  The  same  distinction  relieves  a  difficulty  that 
might  be  felt  about  simple  sensational  qualities. 
If  I  say  that  a  certain  state  of  mind  “is  red,”  this 
seems  paradoxical  only  when  we  interpret  “being 
red”  to  mean,  “that  which  would  appear  red  to  an 
organ  of  vision,”  or  “that  which  has  the  power  of 
producing  a  sensation  of  red  in  an  observer.”  This 
last  phrase  however  would  itself  be  meaningless  if 
we  had  not  had  experiences  themselves  characterized 
both  by  redness  and  by  “causality,”  though  I  grant 
that  what  the  nature  of  this  causal  experience  is 
philosophers  have  not  been  very  successful  in  de¬ 
scribing. 

There  remains  one  final  point  of  great  importance 
for  the  theory.  In  order  to  be  able  to  think  meaning 
apart  from  existence,  existence  also  must  stand  for 
some  definite  aspect  of  reality,  as  I  have  throughout 
had  occasion  to  urge  that  it  does.  But  a  theory  of 
existence  offers  very  considerable  difficulties.  And 
one  of  these  in  particular  the  preceding  account  of 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


78 

essences  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  overlook.  I 
have  held  that  we  can,  and  do,  abstract  the  character 
of  a  thing  from  the  existence  of  this  character  in  the 
concrete  thing.  But  in  that  case,  it  might  be  asked, 
is  existence  itself  an  essence,  or  is  it  not4?  If  it  is, 
then  it  is  as  abstract  as  any  other  essence,  and  exist¬ 
ence  itself  would  not  exist.  If  it  is  not,  then  how 
can  we  think  or  mean  it,  since  everything  we  are  able 
to  think  must  be  reducible  to  an  essence  before  it 
can  get  into  relation  with  the  mind  and  knowledge, 
and  take  on  the  form  of  an  “idea”4? 

I  may  get  round  to  a  consideration  of  this  by 
starting  with  the  reasons  that  justify  us  in  speaking 
of  existence  at  all,  in  a  sense  that  goes  beyond  the 
categories  of  logic.  These  reasons  cannot  themselves 
of  course  be  primarily  logical  ones;  and  for  the 
philosopher  this  fact  has  very  often  been  sufficient 
to  discredit  them.  But  for  the  natural  man  in  his 
normal  moments  they  are  quite  compelling.  Consider 
the  physical  world.  It  is  almost  to  be  sure  a  com¬ 
monplace  nowadays  with  an  influential  group  of 
thinkers,  that  force  is  no  more  than  a  formula,  and 
a  thing  no  more  than  a  law.  And  it  is  hard  to  eradi¬ 
cate  this  opinion  by  argument,  partly  because,  for 
the  special  purposes  of  the  scientist,  energy  is  a 
formula.  His  whole  aim  is  to  reduce  it  to  a  shape 
that  can  be  set  down  in  a  book  and  used  in  calcula¬ 
tions.  And  he  has  accordingly  a  strong  disposition 
to  think  that  when  this  is  questioned  as  an  ultimate 
truth,  the  objector  is  simply  trying  to  reintroduce 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


79 


mystical  and  incalculable  elements  into  science.  But 
if  one  is  to  feel  the  real  force  of  the  issue,  he  would 
do  better  to  take  a  point  of  view  outside  the  special 
scientific  interest,  and  closer  to  that  of  his  everyday 
affairs.  Let  one  imagine  himself,  for  example,  en¬ 
gaged  in  a  life  and  death  struggle  with  any  of  the 
great  forces  of  nature — a  tornado  or  a  raging  tor¬ 
rent;  can  he  still  genuinely  confine  his  belief  in  na¬ 
ture  to  a  set  of  equations,  and  resist  the  practical 
persuasion  that  there  are  real  things  and  real  forces 
that  are  existences  beyond  him,  and  that  set  active 
limits  to  his  self-assertive  will?  I  shall  not  deny 
that  the  thing  can  be  done.  But  for  myself  I  cannot 
manage  it;  and  in  this  I  am  pretty  well  assured  that 
I  should  have  the  general  judgment  of  mankind  with 
me. 

Apart  from  nature,  the  other  sort  of  existence 

which  we  usually  suppose  ourselves  to  know  is  that 

of  psychological  or  conscious  stuff.  And  while  this 

stands  on  a  somewhat  different  basis,  here  also  I 

know  of  no  wav  to  meet  the  claim  that  consciousness 

* 

does  not  exist,  but  is  just  a  relationship  or  a  func¬ 
tion,  except  by  putting  oneself  in  a  certain  situation, 
and  noting  in  what  state  of  belief  it  leaves  us.  And 
the  situation  is,  once  more,  not  that  of  the  scientific 
psychologist  attempting  to  set  forth  the  laws  of 
his  science,  but  that  of  the  plain  human  being.  Con¬ 
sider,  then,  the  experience  of  having  a  vivid  color 
sensation,  or  a  painful  toothache,  or  a  compelling 
emotion.  That  there  is  existence  here,  stuff,  brute 


8o 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


fact  that  cannot  be  resolved  into  relations,  or  activi¬ 
ties,  or  any  of  the  philosophical  devices  for  saving 
the  ultimateness  of  dialectics,  is  to  me  a  result  from 
which  I  find  it  utterly  impossible  to  get  away. 

If  now  we  attempt  next  to  ask  ourselves  just  what 
it  is  we  thus  recognize  as  existence,  we  shall  discover 
that  of  the  two  sorts  of  reality — the  physical  and 
the  psychical — one  is  less  fitted  to  suggest  a  final 
answer  than  the  other.  It  seems — to  me  at  least — 
self-evident  that  the  fundamental  stuff  of  existence 
would  have  itself  to  become  a  part  of  immediate 
experience  before  we  should  have  any  chance  of 
getting  at  its  own  ultimate  being  directly,  though 
without  this  we  might  be  able  to  think  its  abstract 
“characters.”  If  then  there  does  exist  an  independent 
world,  capable  of  being  known  by  human  beings,  but 
not  entering  bodily  into  their  inner  life,  it  follows 
that  we  cannot  possibly  discover  immediately,  or 
apart  from  inference,  the  nature  of  its  “isness,”  but 
can  only  describe  this  in  terms  of  some  essence 
which  it  shows. 

Such  an  essence  is  embodied  in  a  familiar  human 
judgment  as  to  what  it  is  we  mean  by  an  “existent” 
thing;  a  thing  really  exists  when  it  has  consequences , 
and  so  has  to  be  practically  reckoned  with  in  our 
conduct.  And  for  ordinary  purposes  I  think  that  such 
a  definition  is  roughly  adequate  to  our  meaning.  It 
is  true,  as  I  have  said,  that  a  statement  about  what 
existence  does  fails  to  tell  us  directly  what  existence 
is.  And  it  is  not  even  a  full  account  psychologically 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH 


81 


— as  indeed  no  mere  cognitive  formula  or  “essence” 
could  possibly  be — of  the  actual  sense  of  reality 
which  we  feel  when  in  its  presence.  For  this  last  we 
need  to  turn  again  to  the  organic  mechanism  of  be¬ 
lief  which  has  already  been  described.  In  believing, 
we  do  not  have  to  do  with  essence  merely,  but  with 
actual  physical  tension  and  release;  and  it  is  this 
apparently  which  lends  to  a  situation  that  flavor  of 
reality  which  “mere”  ideas  do  not  possess.  But  this 
still  fails  to  meet  our  needs  completely;  it  supplies 
no  content  to  the  notion  of  existence  itself,  though 
it  may  account  for  our  immediate  feeling  of  its 
presence.  And  whatever  the  conditions  under  which 
we  recognize  existence,  and  the  nature  of  its  relation 
to  ourselves,  we  cannot  readily  ignore  the  further 
question,  Must  there  not  be  some  reason  why  certain 
entities  are  thus  big  with  consequences,  while  others 
are  ineffective?  And  it  is  difficult  to  find  language 
to  express  the  nature  of  this  reason,  that  avoids 
speaking  of  the  one  instance  as  existentially  more 
real  than  the  other. 

There  seems  no  chance  of  satisfying  this  ultimate 
demand,  until  we  turn  from  the  physical  world  to 
existence  in  another  form.  Nothing  in  the  preceding 
account,  to  repeat,  really  tells  us  what  existence  as 
such  is;  it  does  no  more  than  point  out  a  character — 
in  terms  of  the  “causal”  relationship  to  specific  hu¬ 
man  experiences — that  will  enable  us  to  detect 
whether  or  not  existents  are  present  in  the  neighbor¬ 
hood.  If  we  are  to  be  able  actually  to  catch  exist- 


82 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


ence  on  the  wing,  it  must  be  on  condition  that  it  is 
present  bodily,  and  not  merely  revealed  through  its 
effects;  and  this  is  only  conceivable  of  a  sort  of 
existence  that  comes  within  psychological  experi¬ 
ence,  and  is  not  simply  “known”  indirectly  through 
the  medium  of  experience.  I  have  already  main¬ 
tained  that  we  do  actually  find  such  an  existent  fact 
in  what  traditionally  has  been  called  psychical,  or 
psychological,  or  conscious,  or  experienced  being — 
feelings,  sensations,  and  all  the  rest.  And  here  ac¬ 
cordingly  the  particular  logical  difficulty  which  I 
started  out  by  raising  cannot  be  longer  evaded. 

Granting,  then,  that  in  the  psychical  fact  we  are 
directly  in  contact  with  existence,  and  that  we  can 
somehow  talk  about  and  therefore  think  it,  is  this 
existence  an  essence,  as  red  is  an  essence*?  I  do  not 
find  that  it  is.  There  is  no  distinguishable  content, 
having  form  or  quality  of  its  own,  that  I  seem  able 
to  hold  before  the  mind  as  a  meaning  to  indicate 
what  the  “existence”  of  a  mental  state  is,  as  distinct 
from  the  “what”  or  character  of  its  existence.  This 
is  why  it  is  so  easy  for  the  philosopher  to  persuade 
himself  that  no  “isness”  remains  over  and  above  the 
intelligible  characters  of  reality — its  logical  de¬ 
scription.  The  being  of  the  psychical  fact  is  not  red¬ 
ness,  or  tonality,  or  spatial  extensity,  or  any  qualita¬ 
tive  term  that  I  can  name;  nor  is  it  all  of  these 
together.  But  neither  are  we  forced  with  the  neo¬ 
realist  to  hold  that  therefore  all  these  characters  are 
reals  in  themselves,  which  have  in  experience  no  in- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH  83 

herent  connection  with  the  psychical ;  red  as  a  sensa¬ 
tion  may  be,  as  it  seems  to  be,  just  one  particular 
form  of  psychical  stuff.  For  I  see  no  logical  reason 
why  existence  may  not  need  so?7ie  character  in  order 
to  exist,  or  why  it  may  not  have  any  number  of 
different  characters,  all  equally  real.  This  “exist¬ 
ence”  cannot  be  described;  but  I  can  point  to  it  as 
an  immediate  revelation  of  experience,  and  say* 
Consider  a  painful  feeling,  or  an  emotion  of  fear,  or 
a  sweet  taste,  or  a  living  memory,  and  see  if  you 
are  not  forced  to  recognize,  over  and  above  any 
terms  in  which  you  can  describe  the  distinctive  quale 
of  these  experiences,  the  sense  of  the  actual  living 
presence  of  the  qualifying  adjectives,  not  now  as  an 
abstract  description,  but  as  the  very  stuff  of  inner 
experience  itself,  a  fact  of  life  and  not  of  logic. 

And  if  now  I  am  asked  again,  How,  if  this  has  no 
specific  content,  can  you  think  or  mean  it?  the  best 
I  can  do  in  way  of  reply  is  to  say:  I  cannot  indeed 
mean  it  in  the  sense  of  having  it  as  a  specific  mean¬ 
ing  before  my  mind,  comparable  with  red  as  red  is 
comparable  with  blue.  But  I  can  actively  mean  it, 
point  to  it,  locate  it,  have  an  anticipatory  sense  that 
I  shall  land  in  its  immediacy.  And  I  can  do  this  be¬ 
cause  the  mechanism  of  meaning,  in  this  second  and 
active  sense,  apart  from  all  the  differences  of  con¬ 
tent  that  constitute  “meanings,”  is  itself  also  a  real 
experience;  and  so  the  immediate  sense  of  reality, 
though  it  never  can  be  pictured  or  reduced  to  rela¬ 
tionships,  is  always  with  me  to  irradiate  with  a 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


84 

feeling  of  significance  my  knowledge  references  to 
the  real.  And  if  we  wish  to  make  this  explicit,  we 
have  only  to  stop  for  a  moment  to  give  attention  to 
the  present  psychical  field  to  have  what  may  intel¬ 
ligibly  be  called  a  direct  knowledge  of  existence, 
apart  from  the  need  of  ideas  to  mediate  it.  For  in 
the  act  of  attention  through  which  we  bring  into  the 
center  of  the  conscious  field  a  present  fact  of  rela¬ 
tively  stable  immediate  experience,  knowledge  and 
being  merge;  we  are  what  we  know  (attentively 
realize),  and  we  know  what  at  the  moment  we  are. 
And  if  we  can  find  no  features  of  this  feeling  back¬ 
ground  which  lend  themselves  to  descriptive  terms, 
and  can  only  identify  it  by  directing  others  to  go 
and  do  likewise,  and  see  what  they  will  see,  this 
only  means  that  reality  is  deeper  and  thicker  than 
logic — a  conclusion  which  after  all  ought  not  to 
surprise  the  philosopher  any  more  than  it  does  the 
ordinary  sensible  man. 

Meanwhile  we  are  now  in  a  position  to  add  one 
further  point  to  the  preceding  account  of  outer  or 
physical  existence  as  well.  For  if  we  are  all  the  while 
actually  experiencing  reality  itself  in  the  form  of 
feeling  stuff,  we  are  in  immediate  possession  of 
something  which  may  very  well  be  used,  in  the  same 
instinctive  way  in  which  essences  are  projected,  to 
color  our  attitude  toward  the  objective  situations 
which  are  brought  home  to  us  primarily  through  our 
biological  reactions.  I  do  not  of  course  mean  that 
there  is  any  conscious  recognition  of  outer  realities 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  TRUTH  85 

as  having  the  same  sort  of  existence  that  feeling  is 
experienced  as  having.  Such  an  idea,  if  it  ever  comes 
to  us  at  all,  evidently  can  only  be  the  outcome  of  a 
belated  philosophical  speculation;  it  has  indeed  no 
possibility  of  arising  in  primitive  experience,  since 
the  intellectual  recognition  of  feeling  as  such  is  it¬ 
self  a  relatively  late  product.  But  I  see  nothing 
against  supposing,  nevertheless,  that  the  latent 
standard  which  feeling-existence  supplies  may  enter 
as  an  element  into  the  unanalyzed  sense  of  existence 
which  we  undoubtedly  project  beyond  ourselves; 
and  that  along  with  the  blind  sensational  feeling 
that  accompanies  muscular  adjustment,  and  the 
more  or  less  obscure  intellectual  perception  of  a 
relevancy  to  needs  or  ends,  there  may  be  present 
also  a  still  obscurer  sense  of  “isness”  itself,  which 
reflection  will  show  to  be  a  shadow  cast  by  our  own 
personal  acquaintance  with  existence  in  the  inner 
life. 

There  still  remains  one  factor  in  the  analysis  with 
which  this  section  opened  which  I  have  not  defined 
— the  “activity”  aspect  of  knowledge.  About  this  a 
good  deal  of  controversy  has  centered,  into  which  I 
do  not  think  it  necessary  to  go,  since  it  hardly  bears 
very  directly  on  my  present  inquiry.  It  perhaps  will 
be  enough  to  say  that  by  mental  activity  I  mean,  not 
an  ultimate  metaphysical  category,  but  something 
that  can  be  empirically  described — a  succession, 
namely,  of  concrete  mental  states  attended  by  a 
sense  of  direction,  of  intent  or  purpose,  such  as  is 


86 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


rendered  possible  through  the  presence  of  an  “idea” 
of  some  future  end  or  event  to  which  the  process 
is  felt  as  leading  up.  There  can  scarcely  be  a  ques¬ 
tion  as  to  the  reality  of  experiences  of  this  sort, 
though  difficulties  may  be  raised  about  their  basis 
and  conditions;  I  doubt  whether  the  same  thing  can 
be  said  of  the  “activity”  of  some  of  the  neo-realists, 
as  an  entity  “in  itself”  standing  in  an  undefined  re¬ 
lationship  to  objects. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES 
AND  OF  THE  PAST 


IN  what  has  been  said  about  the  nature  of  the 
knowing  process,  I  have  so  far  had  in  mind 
chiefly  the  world  of  nature,  more  particularly  with 
reference  to  its  perceptual  basis.  Meanwhile  there 
remain  two  other  very  important  sorts  of  fact  which 
also  plainly  we  are  competent  to  know — the  reality 
of  other  selves,  and  of  those  past  occurrences  for 
which  we  have  to  trust  to  memory.  If  the  results 
of  the  preceding  analysis  are  sound,  we  should  ex¬ 
pect  to  And  these  too  involving,  as  indeed  they  seem 
to  do,  the  presence  of  an  essence  to  mediate  our 
acquaintance  with  them.  But  the  details  can  hardly 
be  quite  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  objects  of  per¬ 
ception;  and  something  further  is  therefore  needed 
for  their  understanding. 

The  attributing  to  objects,  or  to  certain  of  them, 
not  only  the  qualities  and  relationships  which  sense 
experience  supplies,  but  also  those  more  intimate 
emotional  and  volitional  and  intellectual  characters 
that  in  a  peculiar  fashion  constitute  what  I  call 
“myself,5’  might  perhaps  be  thought  to  follow 
readily  enough  from  the  results  already  reached.  If 
these  latter  essences  are  actually  present  within  the 
inner  life,  why  should  we  not  instinctively  assign 
them  also  on  occasion  to  the  realities  with  which 


88 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


we  are  in  contact4?  In  point  of  fact  it  has  been  very 
generally  held  in  recent  years  that  in  our  early  com¬ 
merce  with  the  world  we  probably  do  thus  feel  that 
we  are  in  relationship,  not  with  the  “physical”  in  its 
modern  scientific  sense,  but  with  living  agencies  akin 
to  ourselves.  And  it  is  undoubtedly  so  that  up  to  a 
point  a  tendency  exists  to  personify  our  surround¬ 
ings,  which  might  be  accounted  for  in  the  way  pro¬ 
posed.  Such  a  theory  has  been  set  forth  very  persua¬ 
sively  by  Mr.  Santayana  in  his  Reason  in  Common 
Sense.  On  this  showing,  that  which  chiefly  calls  for 
explanation  is  not  the  belief  in  other  selves,  since 
these  are  the  natural  and  ordinary  objects  of  belief ; 
what  we  have  specially  to  explain  is  the  manner  in 
which  such  an  instinctive  tendency  is  checked,  and 
the  assignment  of  personal  qualities  limited  to  the 
instances  where  it  really  is  justified. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  avoid  the  feeling  that 
this  animistic  or  anthropomorphic  interpretation  of 
the  primitive  nature  experience  goes  somewhat  fur¬ 
ther  than  the  probabilities  warrant.  It  seems  to  pre¬ 
suppose  in  early  man  an  excess  of  imaginative  over 
practical  interests  which  is  not  justified  by  our 
actual  knowledge  either  of  human  or  of  animal  na¬ 
ture,  and  which  would  have  complicated  seriously 
the  business  of  living,  difficult  enough  at  best.  The 
trouble  with  the  mythologizing  tendency  as  a  suffi¬ 
cient  account  of  the  origin  of  the  social  experience, 
is  that  in  its  indiscriminate  bestowal  of  human  at¬ 
tributes  it  gets  away  from  the  practical  conditions 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES  89 

of  human  life,  where  all  objects  are  not  on  an 
equality.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  not  certain 
that  such  an  indiscriminate  tendency  really  exists. 
Recent  investigations  have  made  it  rather  probable 
that  the  earliest  form  of  animism  is  not  so  much 
“personification,’ 7  as  the  attributing  to  the  outer 
world  of  a  pervasive  and  indwelling  “power”  which 
animates  all  things;  and  this  in  some  sense  may  be 
regarded  not  as  mythology  but  as  truth.  Later  on  no 
doubt  a  widespread  disposition  does  exist  to  mytholo¬ 
gize  in  the  stricter  sense.  But  here  it  seems  likely 
that  we  have  to  do  in  large  measure  with  a  play  of 
fancy  dependent  on  the  psychological  law  of  sug¬ 
gestion.  And  not  only  does  suggestion  already  imply 
the  prior  presence  of  social  material,  but  long  before 
leisure  for  the  imaginative  life  can  be  presupposed, 
the  social  experience  must  have  been  already  a  secure 
possession.  It  would  seem  more  plausible,  then,  to 
recognize  limits  to  a  primitive  anthropomorphism. 
A  special  occasion  will  in  consequence  be  needed  to 
account  for  its  appearance;  and  such  an  occasion  is 
at  hand  in  the  exercise  of  those  tendencies  of  human 
nature  which  we  roughly  name  the  social. 

Meanwhile  however,  unless  we  discriminate  a 
little,  this  new  suggestion  also  has  to  meet  what  may 
seem  a  difficulty.  We  are  supposing  that  the  recogni¬ 
tion  of  other  selves  is  the  immediate  and  instinctive 
reading  of  certain  objects  in  the  light  of  what  goes 
on  within  ourselves  when  the  social  impulses  are 
called  into  play.  The  advantage  here  is  the  same  as 


90 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


in  the  previous  theory,  in  that  we  are  undertaking  to 
dispense  with  the  more  intellectual  and  sophisti¬ 
cated  methods  which  an  appeal  to  “analogy”  seems 
to  presuppose,  but  which  there  is  slight  reason  to 
think  within  the  powers  of  primitive  man.  The  fact 
is  however  that  often,  and  perhaps  typically,  the 
quality  which,  correctly  or  incorrectly,  we  assign  to 
a  socius  is  not  the  quality  we  ourselves  are  now  ex¬ 
periencing,  but  a  complementary  one.  After  I  have 
once  accepted  another  self,  I  assume  that  he  will 
have  the  same  sense  experiences  that  I  have  in  a  com¬ 
mon  situation,  and  I  am  likely  to  assume  too,  until 
I  am  disillusioned,  that  his  opinions  and  feelings 
will  naturally  be  the  same  as  mine.  But  in  the  primi¬ 
tive  impulsive  and  emotional  experiences  to  which 
it  seems  most  natural  to  look  for  the  origin  of  the 
recognition,  such  an  identity  will  not  necessarily  be 
found  to  hold.  The  object  of  an  emotional  reaction 
I  envisage  in  the  first  place,  not  as  itself  hating,  but 
as  wicked  or  hateful ;  not  as  loving,  but  as  love-pro¬ 
voking;  not  as  jealous,  but  as  something  to  be 
jealous  of;  not  as  fearing,  but  as  fearsome. 

The  fact  accordingly  of  this  difference  in  the  con¬ 
tent  of  the  referring  act  suggests  that  the  theory 
will  need  to  be  made  a  little  more  complex.  We  are 
not  to  look,  it  would  seem,  for  the  earliest  form  of 
the  “social”  object  in  a  creature  similarly  minded 
with  ourselves,  but  only  in  an  object  with  a  peculiar 
significance  and  interest  for  us,  something  which  is 
not  simply  exploited  in  a  utilitarian  way,  but  which 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES 


9i 


evokes  a  direct  emotional  reaction  of  the  sort  we 
later  come  to  associate  with  the  social  life.  Here  the 
“reality”  of  the  object  derives,  like  the  reality  of 
anything  else,  from  the  reaction  of  the  organism  in 
the  presence  of  that  which  it  has  to  take  into  ac¬ 
count;  while  the  peculiar  character  of  the  object  re¬ 
sults  from  the  part  it  plays  as  the  source  or  occasion 
of  the  social  emotions. 

The  full  conception  of  a  “self,”  however,  in¬ 
volves  much  more  than  this;  it  is  incomplete  with¬ 
out  a  considerable  similarity  of  inner  content  also. 
And  for  explaining  this  last  in  its  completeness,  it 
is  impossible  to  dispense  with  an  appeal  to  some 
form  of — often  more  or  less  unconscious — analogy. 
At  the  start,  however,  the  process  is  supposedly  still 
too  immediate  to  deserve  this  title.  Here  we  may 
conceive  that  the  same  social  tendencies  in  man  con¬ 
tinue  to  play  a  leading  part,  but  in  their  more  dis¬ 
tinctively  cooperative  aspect.  Not  only  do  there 
exist  certain  emotionally  interesting  objects,  but 
some  of  these  objects  we  find  ourselves  prepared  to 
join  in  interesting  common  tasks — which  we  may 
take  as  including  the  task  of  fighting  as  well  as  that 
of  cooperation  in  the  stricter  sense.  And  under  these 
conditions,  it  does  not  appear  unnatural  that  we 
should  be  led  to  feel  in  the  object  which  shares  in 
the  common  activity,  and  helps  to  make  it  possible, 
the  presence  of  the  same  inner  intentions  and  emo¬ 
tions  and  satisfactions  which  we  are  experiencing 
in  ourselves.  This  process,  when  we  come  to  see  its 


92 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


implications,  will  translate  itself  logically  into  an 
act  of  analogy;  and  we  then  extend  its  operation 
widely.  Originally  however  it  will  not  be  necessary 
that  we  should  recognize  such  facts  of  the  inner  life 
as  ours,  or  indeed  that  we  should  recognize  them  as 
existences  at  all;  their  “essence”  might  be  referred 
as  directly  as  the  essences  we  call  physical. 

An  analysis  of  the  knowledge  of  past  reality  in¬ 
volves  somewhat  greater  complications.  This  fact  of 
memory  has  indeed  often  seemed  to  philosophers  a 
peculiarly  mysterious  and  baffling  sort  of  thing. 
How  can  the  mind  reach  out  into  the  past  and  grasp 
the  non-existent?  Is  there  not  something  here  more 
than  ordinarily  paradoxical  ?  And  of  course  memory, 
like  anything  else  in  the  last  analysis,  is  mysterious. 
On  the  whole,  however,  I  am  inclined  to  question 
whether  the  distinctive  mystery  which  is  supposed 
to  belong  to  it  does  not  tend  to  disappear  on  exami¬ 
nation. 

It  has  been  common  for  philosophers  to  look  upon 
memory  as  more  fundamental  than  perception,  and, 
more  or  less  explicitly,  to  build  up  the  world  of  per¬ 
ceptual  objects  on  the  basis  of  its  pronouncements; 
the  philosophy  of  Shadworth  Hodgson  is  a  specially 
explicit  instance  of  this  typical  attitude.  And  of 
course  in  one  sense  this  is  undeniable.  The  fact  of 
persistence  in  consciousness,  whereby  the  bare  mo¬ 
ment  of  awareness  is  enabled  to  become  a  portion  of 
a  more  or  less  enduring  experience,  is  the  necessary 
presupposition  of  any  philosophy;  without  it,  “ex- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES 


93 


perience”  would  not  be  at  all.  This  fact  of  immediate 
memory,  or  of  the  sense  of  time  distinctions  within 
the  specious  present,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  account 
for;  I  see  no  alternative  to  regarding  it  as  one  of 
the  ultimate  data  on  which  reason  has  to  build.  But 
even  if  we  call  such  an  aspect  of  experience  by  the 
name  of  memory,  it  is  not  to  be  identified  with  that 
recall  of  a  lapsed  and  vanished  past  to  which  the 
term  is  commonly  meant  to  apply;  and  it  has  so 
far  proved  impossible  to  deduce  this  last  capacity 
from  it  directly. 

I  propose  to  begin  then  from  the  other  end,  and 
instead  of  using  memory  to  explain  perception,  to 
take  perception  as  a  starting  point  for  the  account 
of  memory.  Assuming  accordingly  that  perceptual 
knowledge,  when  we  look  at  it  in  a  natural  way, 
implies  the  recognition  of  a  real  world,  independent 
of  the  knowing  process,  to  which  we  in  perception 
assign  a  “nature,”  it  follows  that  we  still  are  in  a 
world  of  objects  when,  in  the  absence  of  actual 
contact  with  the  senses,  the  original  experience  is 
ideally  reinstated.  For  memory  to  be  possible,  we  do 
not  have  somehow  to  start  from  the  remembering 
act,  and  out  of  this  evolve  a  transition  to  a  wider 
universe;  to  “remember”  an  object  we  must  first  be 
able  to  think  or  imagine  it,  and  in  thinking  it  we 
are  already  in  an  independent  world.  And  the  ad¬ 
vantage  of  connecting  the  recognition  of  such  a 
world  with  perception  rather  than  with  thought  or 
memory,  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  the  “idea”  the  stress 


94 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


and  pull  that  attend  the  contact  of  an  organic  pro¬ 
pensity  with  an  actual  present  environment  are  no 
longer  there  to  help  us  to  an  explanation,  and  we 
seem  to  be  left  in  consequence  to  an  unmediated, 
and  therefore  magical,  leap  beyond  the  thinking  ex¬ 
perience  by  its  own  unaided  powers. 

The  next  point  to  be  noted  is,  that  in  this  world 
of  objects  there  holds,  among  other  relations,  the 
time  relation  also.  Time,  that  is,  is  not  in  the  first 
instance  a  function  of  memory,  in  the  sense  that  it 
comes  to  light  as  a  relation  between  the  present  ex¬ 
periencing  or  self  and  a  remembered  past;  it  at¬ 
taches  to  objects  or  events  both  of  them  alike  in  the 
objectively  known  world.  This  would  not  be  so  if 
we  were  first  compelled  to  construct  perceptual  ob¬ 
jects  from  the  memory  experience  before  we  were  in 
possession  of  cognitively  independent  reals.  But 
assuming  that  such  reals  have  already  been  given  in 
perception,  there  is  no  reason  why  they  might  not 
show  a  new  relationship  to  one  another  in  which  no 
recognition  of  the  remembering  experience  plays  a 
part.  It  is  not  essential  for  the  present  purpose  that 
we  should  have  a  theory  as  to  the  conditions  under 
which  this  conscious  recognition  first  comes  about, 
though  supposedly  it  is  mediated  through  connection 
with  human  purposes  and  their  progressive  realiza¬ 
tion;  it  is  enough  that  we  do  perceive  the  distinc¬ 
tions  of  before  and  after,  and  have  in  consequence 
the  materials  out  of  which  to  construct  a  temporal 
world.  I  am  able,  then,  to  think  of  things  as  tern- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES 


95 


porally  connected;  and  when  I  remember  an  event 
in  the  past  there  is  always  present,  along  with  what¬ 
ever  else  may  be  implied,  the  reconstruction  of  a 
situation  in  which  temporal  relationships  are  in¬ 
volved,  and  which  I  now  hold  before  my  mind  as  a 
purely  intellectual  and  non- temporal  “idea”  or  es¬ 
sence.  One  essential  of  what  is  meant  by  localizing 
a  thing  in  the  past  is  the  process  of  fitting  it  into 
a  wider  ideal  context  which  takes  the  form  of  such 
a  temporally  related  system. 

But  even  supposing  the  whole  course  of  the 
world’s  events  to  be  taken  up  into  such  a  system,  we 
nevertheless  have  not  yet  arrived  at  the  experience 
which  we  call  memory.  I  can  place  a  fact  of  Greek 
history  in  an  historical  context;  but  I  cannot  re¬ 
member  it  as  past,  though  I  can  know  its  pastness. 
And  a  similar  conclusion  applies  to  one  further 
important  element  in  the  situation,  of  which  likewise 
we  must  say  that,  while  it  is  a  necessary  element,  it 
does  not  constitute  memory  as  such.  This  is  the  feel¬ 
ing  of  familiarity.  Apart  from  this  sense  of  inti¬ 
macy  and  warmth  which  certain  experiences  possess, 
there  would  be  no  tendency  to  welcome  them;  but 
such  a  feeling  offers  in  itself  no  guarantee.  In  true 
memory,  a  picture  rises  indeed  before  me  which  has 
the  standing  of  an  old  acquaintance ;  but  so  equally 
is  the  picture  of  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
familiar.  The  sense  of  familiarity  is  just  a  dumb 
feeling,  whose  interpretation  has  still  to  follow. 
There  remains  one  further  essential  to  the  memory 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


96 

experience — that  the  event  should  be  located  also 
in  our  past.  Even  experiences  that  really  have  been 
ours  we  may  recall,  in  reveries  or  day-dreams,  and 
live  over  again  with  gusto  or  repugnance,  without  in 
the  stricter  sense  being  entitled  to  speak  of  this  as 
memory,  provided  we  are  absorbed  in  the  quality  of 
the  experience  itself,  regardless  of  its  location  in 
a  particular  series  of  experienced  events.  In  such  a 
case  we  are  reliving  the  past  rather  than  remember¬ 
ing  it.  The  thing  that  is  needed  in  addition  is  the 
more  or  less  explicit  sense  of  a  connection  between 
the  past  occurrence,  and  the  living  reality  of  the 
present  self. 

And  the  most  obvious  point  of  identity  to  estab¬ 
lish  this  connection  is,  in  the  first  instance,  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  a  continuing  disposition,  or  interest,  or  what¬ 
ever  it  may  be  called,  which  brings  the  past 
experience  into  the  same  active  scheme  or  system 
that  now  is  prepared  to  function  anew,  as  a  portion 
of  its  ideal  teleological  pattern.  This,  it  should  be  re¬ 
marked,  has  no  need  to  involve  any  explicit  recog¬ 
nition  of  the  “self,”  or  of  the  present  moment  of 
experience  as  an  experience;  as  a  matter  of  fact  it 
cannot  easily  be  supposed  to  do  this,  since  both  the 
self  and  the  psychological  present  are  concepts  of  a 
relatively  late  date,  while  memory  must  go  back 
almost  to  the  beginning  of  things.  But  so  too  must 
the  immediate  sense  of  present  ends  be  equally  origi¬ 
nal.  And  the  tying  up  of  a  familiar  image  to  the 
serving  of  such  ends  not  only  suggests  a  beginning 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES 


97 


therefore  for  the  remembering  experience,  but  even 
yet  it  is  involved  in  the  most  intimate  and  vital  type 
of  memory.  Certainly,  in  spite  of  what  may  be  our 
knowledge  that  an  event  belongs  to  our  own  past,  it 
actually  does  seem  strange  and  foreign  to  us  so  long 
as  it  lies  outside  of  dispositions  that  are  still  alive 
and  a  part  of  our  present  nature.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  I  can  be  said  in  any  proper  sense  to  “re¬ 
member’5  an  incident  in  remote  childhood,  as  distinct 
from  the  habit  I  have  formed  of  thinking  of  it  as 
mine.  It  might  perhaps  be  urged  that  the  sudden 
recrudescence  of  an  event  in  childhood  is  possible, 
with  no  intermediate  repetitions  to  set  up  a  habit. 
But  granting  the  possibility,  the  fact  may  still  easily 
be  that  the  event  only  gets  located  in  our  personal 
past,  either  through  an  inference  that  what  is  re- 
vivable  must  once  have  been  an  experience  of  ours — 
a  dubious  inference  in  the  light  of  false  memory — 
or  because  the  revived  fact  finds  a  natural  place  in  a 
context  already  recognized  as  ours. 

Meanwhile  this  last  point  suggests  the  final  re¬ 
mark  that,  in  a  great  majority  of  our  so-called 
memories,  a  connection  with  the  actual  present  self 
is  only  latent,  and  we  have  little  more  than  the  in¬ 
tellectual  recognition  of  a  content  which  we  have 
grown  used  to  calling  ours.  Here  it  is  necessary,  in 
addition,  that  we  should  not  only  have  made  use 
of  memory  in  the  actual  conduct  of  life,  but  should 
have  arrived  at  a  recognition  of  the  “self”  as  a 
serial  group  of  particular  psychological  experiences 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


98 

more  or  less  accurately  dated,  and  attaching  at  its 
proximate  end  to  what  we  have  also  learned  to 
think  of  explicitly  as  the  present  moment.  This, 
however,  is  a  relatively  sophisticated  and  even  aca¬ 
demic  conception  of  memory.  It  takes  the  form  pri¬ 
marily  of  a  logical  or  ideal  system  in  which  the 
present  self  enters  as  also  only  an  intellectual  or 
ideal  content ;  and  as  such  it  serves  as  one  of  the  in¬ 
tellectual  tools  of  the  practical  act  of  remembering, 
rather  than  directly  constitutes  it. 

What  I  have  been  trying  to  maintain  is,  then,  that 
we  do  not  have,  outside  of  primary  memory,  which 
is  not  in  question  here,  what  has  sometimes  been 
called  an  immediate  and  present  sense  of  past  ex¬ 
perience.  The  experience  of  memory  is  analyzable 
into  three  aspects — an  organized  habit  or  disposi¬ 
tion,  a  purely  intellectual  framework  of  ideal  con¬ 
tent  within  which  temporal  relationships  hold,  and 
the  feeling  of  familiarity,  which  last  however 
neither  constitutes  memory  as  an  intellectual  fact, 
nor  guarantees  its  reliability.  Meanwhile  the  “tran¬ 
scendence”  of  what  is  remembered  to  the  present 
mental  state  is  due  primarily  to  none  of  these,  nor 
to  all  of  them  together,  but  is  already  involved  in 
the  fact  that  recall  is  an  ideal  repetition  of  that  act 
of  perception  which  gives  us  “objects”  to  begin  with. 
The  groundwork  of  memory  is  thus  in  terms  of  a 
world  of  objects  between  which  a  perceived  relation 
of  temporal  succession  exists,  the  piecing  on  of  this 
to  the  present  situation  being  also  a  purely  intel- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  SELVES 


99 


lectual  construction  rather  than  any  novel  form  of 
immediate  experiencing.  And  its  essential  character 
is,  normally,  not  the  restoring  of  a  flow  of  past  ex¬ 
periences  continuous  with  the  present  one,  as  James 
Mill  for  example  thought,  but  the  bringing  of  the 
past  into  connection  with  the  significant  meaning 
of  our  lives,  as  represented  by  existing  interests  and 
ends.  It  is  only  secondarily  that,  after  our  attention 
has  once  been  turned  to  the  psychological  fact  con¬ 
temporaneous  with  the  objects  of  a  present  interest, 
we  build  up  the  picture  of  a  single  life  history  in 
which  various  events  are  more  or  less  definitely 
dated. 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


IN  the  preceding  pages  I  have  given  an  account  of 
the  knowing  experience  which  in  my  judgment 
is  verifiable  as  an  analysis,  and  open  to  fewer  serious 
objections  on  the  whole  than  competing  theories. 
I  propose  next  to  add  a  few  remarks  of  a  somewhat 
desultory  sort,  with  the  purpose  more  especially  of 
placing  the  conception  in  its  relation  to  various  cur¬ 
rent  philosophies. 

That  to  which  it  has  the  closest  relation  is,  of 
course,  common-sense  or  “representative’ 5  dualism. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  I  should  have  no  objection  per¬ 
sonally  to  accepting  this  title  for  it,  were  it  not  that 
I  should  be  afraid  of  offering  too  inviting  a  target 
to  critics  inclined  to  be  captious.  It  has  for  some 
time  been  a  commonplace  among  philosophers  of  a 
great  variety  of  brands,  that  to  be  a  “dualist,”  more 
particularly  a  representative  dualist,  is  to  reveal  at 
the  outset  one’s  entire  incompetence  for  the  philo¬ 
sophical  game.  This  habit  of  giving  a  descriptive 
title  a  bad  name,  and  then  using  it  to  condemn  an 
uncongenial  theory,  is  always  an  unfortunate  one, 
and  accounts  for  many  of  the  easy  victories  which 
metaphysicians  win;  but  it  has  to  be  taken  into  ac¬ 
count.  It  will  therefore  be  safer  to  call  attention 
once  more  to  the  precise  nature  of  the  resemblances 
and  the  differences  between  the  present  theory  and 
the  commoner  form  of  dualism. 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


101 


What  the  representative  theory  of  knowledge  has 
usually  been  interpreted  as  saying,  is  to  the  effect 
that  we  first  come  to  know  sensations  as  facts  in 
the  inner  life,  and  then  project  these  outside  our¬ 
selves,  probably  through  the  need  of  finding  a  cause 
for  their  occurrence.  Up  to  this  point  dualism  would 
be  essentially  in  agreement  with  the  ordinary  forms 
also  of  a  scientific  or  realistic  agnosticism.  But  while 
agnosticism  supposes  that  the  only  relation  which 
sensations  bear  to  their  causes  is  the  causal  one  it¬ 
self,  and  that  no  community  of  nature  exists  be¬ 
tween  the  two,  representational  ism  would  hold  that 
there  is,  to  some  extent  at  least,  a  likeness  also,  and 
that  the  image  in  the  mind  “copies”  the  reality  out¬ 
side.  I  have  repudiated  as  explicitly  as  I  know  how 
the  opinion  that  we  first  know  something  that  can  be 
called  a  mental  state;  and  with  this  it  will  be  found 
that  most  of  the  stock  objections  that  philosophers 
feel  under  obligation  to  go  on  repeating  fall  away 
at  once.  On  the  other  hand,  the  position  I  have 
adopted  does  continue  to  be  a  dualism,  and  knowl¬ 
edge  may  even,  if  the  statement  is  not  misinter¬ 
preted,  be  said  to  copy  reality.  The  grounds  for  this 
dualism  it  may  perhaps  be  useful  to  restate. 

While  sensations  or  mental  images  are  not  the 
primary  objects  of  knowledge,  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  a  mental  state  distinct  in  point  of  existence  from 
the  object  known,  and  serving  as  a  necessary  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  knowing  process.  The  inability  to  sepa¬ 
rate  these  two  claims  has  been  responsible  for  a  very 


102 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


large  amount  of  rather  artificial  ingenuity  devoted 
to  the  task  of  eliminating  a  datum  which,  it  has  been 
thought,  renders  genuine  knowledge  impossible.  But 
whatever  may  be  the  temptation  thus  to  get  rid  of 
mental  states  as  a  supposed  screen  between  the  mind 
and  reality,  the  effort  is  bound  to  be  a  tour  de  force , 
which  leaves  the  unsophisticated  reader  incredulous, 
and  the  theorist  himself  usually  a  little  apologetic. 
He  does  indeed  have  his  own  appeal  to  make  to  com¬ 
mon  sense.  Is  it  so,  he  asks  the  dualist,  that  the 
plain  man  in  perception  recognizes  any  distinction 
between  objects,  as  if  the  real  thing  were  only  the 
projection  of  an  inner  copy?  But  this  question  quite 
loses  its  point  if  we  suppose  that  the  mental  state 
does  not  in  perception  recognize  itself  as  such,  but 
simply  is  there  as  the  vehicle  of  the  act  of  knowing. 
And  to  deny  that  subsequent  inquiry  will  reveal  the 
existence  of  “psychological”  data  is  on  the  face  of  it 
a  little  arbitrary.  Greek  philosophy  might  excusably 
confine  itself,  with  no  need  for  apology,  to  a  choice 
between  a  universe  of  material  substance  and  a  uni¬ 
verse  of  logical  entities,  because  analysis  had  not  as 
yet  succeeded  in  making  explicit  that  difference  be¬ 
tween  the  physical  or  the  logical,  and  the  psychical, 
which  Descartes  erected  into  a  philosophical  postu¬ 
late.  But  for  the  modern  thinker  to  do  this,  ignoring 
the  most  insistent  of  the  problems  which  philosophy 
has  agitated  since  Descartes’  time,  and  the  long  and 
honorable  history  of  empirical  psychology — for  psy¬ 
chology  did  not  come  into  existence  with  the  appear- 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


103 


ance  of  behaviorism  in  the  last  few  years — is  not 
equally  excusable.  Both  the  logical  idealism  im¬ 
ported  from  Germany,  and  the  new  materialism  of 
the  American  neo-realists  and  the  pragmatists,  are 
so  difficult  to  come  to  terms  with  controversially 
just  for  this  reason,  that  they  quietly  set  aside  all 
the  evidence  pointing  to  the  presence  in  the  world 
of  specific  realities  which  are  not  identical  either 
with  logical  terms  and  propositions,  or  with  organic 
reactions  to  a  physical  environment,  and  so  go  back 
to  the  analytical  naivete  of  Plato  and  Democritus. 

One  attempt  at  a  similar  outcome  has  indeed  been 
made  which  is  not  open  to  this  charge;  it  does  not 
ignore  altogether  the  evidence  for  the  psychical,  but, 
starting  from  the  empirical  fact,  it  undertakes  by 
carrying  the  analysis  further  to  get  rid  in  a  legiti¬ 
mate  manner  of  the  mental  state  as  a  special  entity. 
This  is  the  neo-realistic  doctrine  of  knowledge  as  an 
“act  of  awareness” — a  doctrine  which  splits  up  the 
supposed  conscious  fact  that  intervenes  between 
knowing  and  its  object  into  an  “act”  and  a  “con¬ 
tent,”  the  qualitative  content  being  then  identified 
with  the  “object”  of  knowledge,  while  the  “mental” 
no  longer  stands  as  a  mediate  image  or  sensation, 
but  as  an  unmediated  “operation”  face  to  face  with 
reality.  On  the  whole  I  do  not  think  it  can  be  said 
that  the  difficulties  which  this  ingenious  theory 
raises  have  been  appreciably  diminished  by  the  dis¬ 
cussions  of  the  last  few  years.  It  still  remains  very 
hard  to  grasp  the  notion  of  a  bare  “act”  which  has 


104 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


no  further  nature;  this  seems  to  be  the  mere  concept 
of  activity,  and  in  that  case  would  represent  only 
another  attempt  to  reduce  reality  to  logical  defini¬ 
tion.  So,  again,  the  more  one  reflects  upon  the  pe¬ 
culiar  direction  which  this  act  is  supposed  to  take  in 
order  to  constitute  knowledge,  the  more  it  seems  ap¬ 
parent  that  we  are  getting  away  from  any  possibility 
of  throwing  real  light  upon  the  nature  of  knowing, 
and  are  leaving  it  a  sheer  mystery.  To  be  related  to 
an  “activity”  stands  for  nothing  whatever  that  is 
distinctive;  and  if  we  add  the  term  “awareness” 
to  distinguish  this  activity  from  others  in  the  world, 
this  is,  once  more,  merely  identifying  the  peculiar 
phenomenon  by  a  word,  and  leaving  it  without  any 
concrete  characterization. 

The  only  real  reason  for  refusing  to  turn  back 
to  the  traditional  belief  that,  in  connection  with 
the  processes  of  the  biological  life,  certain  new  reali¬ 
ties  make  their  appearance  of  a  sensational  or  af- 
fectional  order,  is  the  supposed  difficulty  that  it  puts 
in  the  way  of  genuine  possibilities  of  knowledge. 
Sensations  appear  to  be  there,  as  anyone  who  will 
make  a  serious  attempt  to  follow  the  analyses  of  the 
older  empirical  psychology  may  convince  himself. 
And  I  have  endeavored  already  to  show  not  only 
that  they  are  consistent  with  the  possibility  of 
knowledge,  but  that  they  are  urgently  demanded  if 
the  knowing  function  is  not  to  be  left  in  the  air  with 
no  ascertainable  connection  with  reality.  It  is  true 
great  care  will  need  to  be  taken  verbally  in  order 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES  105 

to  avoid  difficulties,  and  certain  fundamental  dis¬ 
tinctions  will  have  to  be  kept  constantly  in  mind.  In 
particular,  it  is  essential  to  hold  fast  to  the  difference 
between  awareness  as  a  cognitive  term  in  the  strict 
or  mediate  sense  of  knowledge,  and  awareness  as 
the  felt  presence  of  reality  in  immediate  experience, 
before  it  is  attended  to  or  reflected  on.  But  this  is  a 
readily  verifiable  distinction  if  one  will  take  the 
trouble;  and  a  refusal  to  use  it  for  avoiding  verbal 
inconsistencies  suggests  a  determination  to  get  rid 
of  the  psychical  rather  than  a  candid  weighing  of 
its  claims. 

But  while  the  point  of  view  I  am  representing 
agrees  with  the  older  dualism  in  insisting  upon  the 
reality  of  the  mental  state,  it  is  also  able,  as  I  hope 
I  have  made  plain,  to  sympathize  up  to  a  certain 
point  with  that  “logical”  emphasis  which  is  much 
more  typical  of  modern  epistemology.  For  it  has  in¬ 
sisted  that  the  ideal  content  of  knowledge,  while  it 
has  its  existential  basis  in  the  sensation  or  image,  is 
in  truth  a  logical  fact,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  merely 
the  characters  embodied  in  the  mental  state  which 
knowing  refers  automatically  to  the  world  in  con¬ 
tact  with  the  organism,  and  not  the  mental  state  it¬ 
self.  It  also  insists,  however,  that  the  abstract  con¬ 
tent  is  not  the  entire  fact  of  knowledge,  but  stands 
rather  for  a  tool  which  actual  beings  make  use  of  in 
a  world  of  actual  things  and  persons;  and  here  it 
comes  sharply  into  conflict  with  certain  rival  theo¬ 
ries.  I  shall  add  in  this  connection  a  few  words  to 


io6 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


indicate  somewhat  more  explicitly  wherein  the  de¬ 
ficiencies  of  two  of  these  in  particular  appear  to 
me  to  lie. 

In  the  case  of  objective  idealism,  the  fundamental 
vice  of  method  may  perhaps  be  traced  to  an  am¬ 
biguity  in  the  notion  of  the  “concrete  universal.” 
What  this  phrase  ought  plainly  to  stand  for,  as  an 
attempted  characterization  of  reality  or  the  uni¬ 
verse,  is  a  unity  of  system  inclusive  of  the  entire 
actual  content  of  existence — things,  persons,  the 
processes  of  history,  the  evolution  of  physical  na¬ 
ture — all  related  in  terms  of  some  luminous  sort  of 
inner  unity.  It  is  to  express  this  realistic  view  that 
the  term  “experience”  is  drawn  upon.  Experience, 
as  is  particularly  obvious  in  the  philosophy  of  such 
a  relatively  concrete-minded  idealist  as  Royce,  is 
evidently  intended  to  bring  to  the  interpretation  of 
the  universe  the  analogy  of  a  human  experience — a 
concrete  psychological  process  which  is  interpretable 
not  as  a  conceptual  unity  merely,  but  as  an  existence 
also,  or  a  whole  of  feeling. 

But  experience  is  not  the  word  that  most  ade¬ 
quately  suggests  the  original  emphasis  in  idealism, 
or  the  method  on  which  it  still  continues  mainly  to 
rely.  And  accordingly  in  practice  the  concrete  uni¬ 
versal  has  more  frequently  another  meaning,  which 
must  be  distinguished  from  the  former  one  if  we  are 
not  to  overlook  very  real  problems,  and  so  render  our 
philosophy  over-facile.  In  this  second  meaning,  the 
universal  is  itself  a  concept ,  though  a  concept  which 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


107 


gathers  up  the  conceptual  nature  of  all  other  inter¬ 
pretative  categories.  To  experience,  this  inclusive 
concept  may  indeed  apply  as  a  description  of  its 
logical  nature;  but  experience  in  the  Roycean  or 
Bradleyan  sense  is  something  more  than  its  concep¬ 
tual  definition.  And  in  this  second  sense,  as  an  affair 
of  definition  or  of  dialectic,  the  concrete  universal 
is  no  longer  identical  with  the  universe  itself,  unless 
we  start  by  assuming  that  reality  is  nothing  but  a 
system  of  logical  concepts.  It  is  with  the  second  or 
conceptual  interpretation  that,  as  I  have  said,  most 
idealists  are  almost  exclusively  concerned.  Actual 
things  and  actual  processes  for  the  most  part  they 
ignore.  They  are  dealing  not  with  men,  but  with 
mankind  or  society;  not  with  minds,  but  with  Mind; 
not  with  organisms,  but  with  the  organism.  And 
their  aim  is  to  show  how  one  idea  implies  another,  or 
how  a  simpler  sort  of  thing  involves  in  its  “defini¬ 
tion”  something  more  complex. 

And  the  assumption  back  of  this  which  the  ideal¬ 
ist  invariably  makes — when,  that  is,  he  does  not  set 
aside  the  concrete  altogether  and  so  escape  the  prob¬ 
lem — is  that,  when  we  have  once  shown  that  con¬ 
ceptual  definitions  through  their  mutual  implica¬ 
tion  imply  an  intellectual  unity  of  “mind”  or 
“spirit,”  we  are  justified  forthwith  in  saying  that 
the  things  defined  form  a  unity  of  precisely  the  same 
sort  and  degree.  But  this  is  something  we  have  no 
right  to  assume.  If  it  is  true,  it  must  be  shown  to  be 
true.  And  the  more  the  case  is  examined,  the  less 


io8 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


evident  does  the  thesis  become,  unless  once  again 
we  meet  the  difficulty  by  repudiating  its  source,  and 
refuse  to  see  any  distinction  between  things  and  their 
conceptual  definitions. 

There  are  two  preliminary  points  which  at  least 
suggest  an  inadequacy  in  the  idealistic  method.  In 
the  first  place,  it  notoriously  fails  to  make  even  a 
step  toward  breaking  down  the  empirical  distinction 
between  the  rationally  necessary  and  the  contingent, 
and  deducing  the  actual  facts  and  occurrences  that 
constitute  the  “real”  world.  Whatever  light  phi¬ 
losophy  may  succeed  in  throwing  on  the  ideal  mean¬ 
ing  of  history  after  the  facts  have  been  given  to  it,  it 
has  absolutely  no  way  of  saying  what  these  facts 
must  be;  and  it  usually  stultifies  itself  completely 
when  it  ventures  upon  prophecy.  But  if  conceptual 
implications  were  in  reality  capable  of  being  trans¬ 
ferred  without  reinterpretation  to  existence,  this 
helplessness  is  difficult  to  explain. 

About  this  first  difficulty  idealists  have,  in  com¬ 
parison  with  its  importance,  never  had  very  much  to 
say.  The  second  point  has  received  more  frequent 
recognition,  though  here  also  a  serious  attempt  at  a 
solution  has  seldom  been  undertaken.  Objective 
idealism  is  committed  to  the  notion  that  reality  is 
essentially  a  timeless  whole.  So  long  as  it  confines 
itself  to  the  manipulation  of  concepts  this  is  intel¬ 
ligible,  and  even  inevitable.  A  logical  fact  is  a  time¬ 
less  fact  because,  in  giving  our  attention  to  the  ab¬ 
stract  character  of  things,  we  are  explicitly  taking 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


109 


it  out  of  time.  Time  may  indeed  itself  enter  into  a 
conceptual  definition;  history,  for  example,  can 
hardly  be  defined  except  as  undergoing  succession. 
But  it  is  not  the  actual  process  of  time  itself  that 
persists  in  the  logical  world.  Time  here  becomes  just 
the  idea  of  time,  and  the  idea  of  time  is  of  course 
itself  timeless.  The  moment  however  we  turn  to  the 
real  world  of  things  and  actions,  we  find  timelessness 
an  extremely  difficult  notion.  It  is  quite  impossible 
to  think  this  real  world  concretely,  as  it  actually 
comes  to  us  in  experience,  without  thinking  of  it  as 
undergoing  progressive  change ;  anything  else  would 
falsify  its  obvious  character.  The  idealist  has  no 
solution  of  the  difficulty.  He  is  bound  to  hold  to  the 
claim  that  reality  is  timeless,  for  the  sake  of  the  con¬ 
ceptual  universal  in  which  his  main  interest  always 
lies;  and  if  by  chance  he  does  turn  instead  to  the 
concrete  whole  of  existence ,  his  only  recourse  is  to 
lay  the  blame  on  the  inadequacy  of  our  human  ways 
of  thinking.  This  at  least  raises  a  presumption 
against  the  identification  of  the  two  forms  of  the 
“universal.” 

And  the  doubt  appears  to  be  confirmed  when  we 
come  to  scrutinize  the  assumption  itself.  The  thesis 
is,  once  more,  that  the  unity  of  a  conceptual  system 
is  convertible  directly  with  the  unity  of  a  concrete 
universe.  Let  us  consider  first  an  instance  where  the 
object  which  a  conceptual  unity  defines  may  also  be 
safely  taken  as  existing,  and  where  the  identity 
therefore  is  open  to  testing.  A  good  example  will  be 


]  10 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


found  in  the  notion  of  “society.”  Conceptually  man 
and  society  are  mutually  implicated  in  a  unity  which 
is  intimate  and  organic;  it  is  impossible  to  define  one 
without  reference  to  the  other.  And  this  definition  of 
society  will  of  course  “apply”  to  society  as  the  true 
description  of  an  existing  fact.  But  the  attempt  to 
translate  the  conceptual  unity  of  definition  directly 
into  a  “real”  unity  of  existence  meets  with  serious 
obstacles.  Such  a  real  unity  we  have  before  us  as  a 
model  in  the  experienced  whole  of  feeling  which 
constitutes  an  individual  life;  but  it  is  only  by  an 
extreme  of  paradox  that  the  philosopher  can  claim 
for  society  the  same  sort  of  existential  wholeness 
that  is  found  in  the  lives  of  its  individual  members. 
The  concept  of  social  experience  is  the  description 
not  of  a  personal  experience,  but,  explicitly,  of  a 
society,  or  of  a  community  of  personal  experience- 
centers.  The  moment  we  turn  from  the  concept  man 
to  men,  these  last  reveal  a  form  of  being  which  is 
exclusive  of  other  men,  though  at  the  same  time  the 
presence  of  ideal  references  to  other  similar  beings 
makes  society  a  part  of  their  significance  or  meaning, 
and  implicates  it  therefore  in  the  definition  of  all 
that  their  nature  involves. 

Even  in  the  case,  then,  of  realities  to  which  we 
have  empirical  reason  to  believe  that  a  systematic 
description  applies,  we  cannot  pass  without  further 
argument  from  this  description  to  a  similar  unity  of 
existence.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  things  exist  in 
separation,  connected  by  relationships  that  “sub- 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


1 1 1 


sist,”  but  that  do  not  constitute  an  existential  or 
experienced  whole ;  and  this  seems  to  be  actually  the 
case  at  innumerable  points  in  the  existing  world.  If 
accordingly  we  recognize  any  difference  at  all  be¬ 
tween  speculative  concepts  and  concrete  experience 
— and  the  disposition  of  idealists  to  reduce  reality 
itself  to  the  conceptual  must  again  constantly  be  al¬ 
lowed  for — we  are  also  bound  to  recognize  that 
unity  may  have  a  different  meaning  in  the  two  fields, 
which  makes  it  hazardous  to  pass  uncritically  from 
one  of  them  to  the  other. 

Meanwhile  the  method  of  idealism  might  have  a 
second  interpretation,  in  some  respects  less  open  to 
objection.  Without  pretending  now  to  translate  re¬ 
ality  into  a  distinctive  unity  of  “experience,”  analo¬ 
gous  to  the  wholeness  of  an  individual  life,  it  may 
mean  to  assert,  simply,  that  a  true  description  of  the 
real  world,  whatever  its  existence  may  mean,  can  be 
attained  by  manipulating  conceptual  data,  and  ap¬ 
plying  to  reality  the  sort  of  inclusive  concept  which 
most  completely  harmonizes  these  data. 

Taken  as  a  hypothetical  method  merely,  this  does 
no  doubt  represent  an  aspect  of  the  process  of  in¬ 
tellectual  inquiry.  If  we  are  trying  to  understand 
the  nature  of  something  where  the  empirical  evi¬ 
dence  stops  short  of  being  conclusive,  it  is  natural 
that  we  should  go  to  work  by  applying  to  it,  tenta¬ 
tively,  further  categories  with  which  we  are  familiar 
— categories  whose  chance  of  success  is  perhaps 
likely  to  increase  as  they  become  more  complex  and 


1 12 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


inclusive.  Such  a  method  has  constantly  been  used 
by  philosophers,  in  particular,  as  a  source  for  their 
ultimate  constructions  of  reality.  Thus  the  concept 
of  a  social  whole  again — one  of  the  most  “organic” 
of  the  unities  that  experience  offers  us — may  in  this 
way,  irrespective  of  the  sort  of  question  previously 
raised,  be  used  to  supply  a  hypothetical  account  of 
the  world,  which  justifies  our  faith  in  so  far  as  it 
appears  to  overcome  the  contradictions  that  develop 
in  the  process  of  thinking  reality,  and  to  throw  light 
upon  its  dark  places. 

But  idealism  contends  for  more  than  this.  Its 
thesis  is  that  pure  thought  has  a  definite  logical  or 
dialectical  structure  such  that,  from  whatever  point 
we  start,  we  shall,  if  we  care  about  avoiding  contra¬ 
diction,  find  ourselves  necessarily  led  to  a  compre¬ 
hensive  concept  into  which  each  subordinate  cate¬ 
gory  enters  as  an  aspect  or  moment,  and  which  we 
are  forced  to  acquiesce  in  as  a  true  account  of  the 
actual  universe.  This  Hegel  undertook  to  show  to 
the  world  once  for  all ;  and  the  undertaking  has  very 
commonly  been  assumed  by  his  disciples  to  be  a  per¬ 
manent  landmark  in  the  history  of  human  thinking. 
It  is  true  that  nobody  now  supposes  that  Hegel’s 
own  dialectical  results  were  final;  that  few  idealists 
make  any  attempt  to  provide  a  substitute ;  and  that 
many  of  them  do  not  conceal  a  suspicion  that  the 
task  is  one  beyond  the  powers  of  the  philosopher  to 
accomplish.  Nevertheless  the  tradition  still  holds 
that  the  Hegelian  dialectic  represents  the  funda- 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


n3 

mental  ideal  of  reason,  and  could  be  carried  through 
were  reason  as  competent  in  practice  as  it  is  in 
essence. 

It  is  not  of  course  my  purpose  here  to  subject  to 
any  thorough  criticism  the  Hegelian  logic.  But  I 
may  in  passing  make  two  remarks  of  a  very  general 
nature.  It  does  not  lack  plausibility  to  claim  that 
what  we  are  unable  to  think  without  falling  into 
self-contradiction  cannot  be  true,  or  completely  true, 
of  reality.  I  shall  indicate  presently  in  what  form  I 
think  such  a  claim  can  be  accepted.  But  Hegel  has 
notoriously  a  peculiar  notion  of  contradiction.  If 
one  takes  almost  any  stage  in  the  dialectic,  he  will 
find  Hegel  arguing  that  because,  when  I  make  a  cer¬ 
tain  statement  in  terms  of  a  given  thought  category, 
I  can,  from  some  different  point  of  view ,  make  with 
equal  propriety  a  contrary  statement,  I  have  fallen 
into  contradiction.  But  this  is  not  what  we  ordinarily 
mean  by  the  word.  Jones  is  both  a  son  and  a  father, 
but  there  is  no  contradiction  here;  the  fact  that  he 
also  is  something  that  is  not  a  son  does  not  affect  the 
truth  of  the  statement  that  he  really  is  a  son,  among 
other  things.  If  indeed  we  wish  to  speak  of  that 
which  fails  to  be  completely  intelligible  or  inclusive 
of  the  full  totality  of  truth  as  contradictory,  we 
have  the  right  to  do  so.  But  it  will  be  sure  to  lead 
to  trouble  and  misunderstanding.  Outside  of  the  pe¬ 
culiar  idealistic  view  of  knowledge,  it  is  universally 
recognized  that  a  truth  may  in  the  strictest  sense 
be  true  even  though  it  is  not  all  the  truth;  in  the 


H4 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


larger  system  of  truth  it  may  still  persist  as  an  ele¬ 
ment,  unchanged  in  its  essential  nature  by  the  wider 
relationships  into  which  it  enters.  And  if  this  is  pos¬ 
sible  at  all,  it  excludes  any  necessity  that  a  true  de¬ 
scription  of  the  world  must  be  in  the  form  of  a 
single  comprehensive  category  into  which  the  self- 
identity  of  every  lower  category  merges  and  disap¬ 
pears. 

And  even  if  we  were  to  allow  that  intelligibility 
can  be  secured  only  in  terms  of  one  comprehensive 
notion,  the  idealist  still  is  going  beyond  his  obvious 
and  unquestioned  rights.  For  while  it  may  seem 
natural  to  say  that  we  cannot  accept  as  true  what  is 
inconsistent,  it  does  not  follow  that  because  a  system 
is  consistent  it  therefore  must  be  true.  Supposing  it 
possible  to  attain  to  some  all-embracing  category 
which  rounds  out  and  completes  each  lesser  one,  it 
still  is  no  consequence  of  the  law  of  contradiction 
that  this  must  needs  hold  of  the  actual  world  which 
human  thought  tries  to  understand. 

And  the  ground  for  this  judgment  is  evident  if 
we  translate  the  idealistic  thesis  into  a  simpler  and 
more  empirical  form — a  form  which,  though  the 
idealist  himself  would  not  of  course  accept  it,  will, 
it  is  likely,  carry  a  stronger  appeal  to  some  minds 
than  his  own  interpretation  does.  Hegel’s  supreme 
category  finds  its  easiest  interpretation  if  we  turn  it 
into  psychology,  and  hold  that  the  unity  which 
throws  light  on  the  categories  is  the  purposive  or  “or¬ 
ganic”  unity  of  an  individual  life-process.  If  all  the 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


1 15 

notions  of  which  I  make  intellectual  use  are  em¬ 
ployed  in  the  interests  of  “life” — a  statement  that 
gets  meaning  only  in  so  far  as  life  is  intelligent  and 
purposive- — it  would  not  be  very  surprising  if  we 
were  to  find  that  each  of  them  can  be  shown  to  have 
a  more  or  less  organic  place  within  this  teleological 
whole,  thereby  becoming  easier  to  understand.  Some 
of  the  puzzles  about  the  popular  notion  of  causality, 
for  example,  might  disappear  if  causation  were  to 
be  conceived  as  borrowing  a  part  of  its  apparent 
character  from  a  larger  teleological  situation, 
wherein  intelligible  bonds  of  connection  can  be  seen 
to  hold. 

In  point  of  fact  it  is  often  possible  to  interpret 
Hegel  from  such  a  standpoint.  But  if  we  once  regard 
the  unity  of  rational  system  as  a  function  of  the  in¬ 
tellectual  efforts  of  an  individual  mind  to  adjust 
life  to  its  conditions,  we  have  taken  away  the  ground 
for  any  logical  necessity  that  it  should  be  adequate 
to  this  real  conditioning  world.  A  tool  in  the  evolu¬ 
tionary  process,  we  may  plausibly  believe  that  as  a 
tool  it  wrnuld  not  work  as  successfully  as  it  does  were 
it  not  roughly  adjusted  to  the  facts.  But  this  is  an 
empirical,  and  not  a  logical  argument.  It  is  con¬ 
sistent  with  wide  variations  in  the  degree  of  accuracy 
that  thought  attains.  At  best  it  applies  far  more 
forcibly  to  the  simpler  than  to  the  more  comprehen¬ 
sive  concepts.  And  it  is  open  to  the  logical  objection 
that  it  cannot  be  made  to  work  at  all  unless  we  first 
beg  a  sufficient  amount  of  unreasoned  faith  in  our 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


1 16 

intellectual  machinery  to  have  attained  a  belief  in 
the  evolutionary  process  on  which  the  argument 
rests. 

I  may  amplify  a  little  the  contention  here  by 
turning  to  a  somewhat  simpler  form  of  the  idealistic 
claim,  which  comes  much  closer  to  our  more  familiar 
use  of  terms.  In  recent  years  Royce,  in  particular, 
has  made  continual  use  of  this.  The  essence  of  the 
new  claim  is,  that  there  are  certain  truths  about  the 
constitution  of  the  world  which  we  are  forced  to 
accept  because  they  are  implicated  in  the  very  nature 
of  reason,  and  because  they  have  therefore  to  be  used 
in  any  rational  argument  whatsoever,  even  an  argu¬ 
ment  that  attempts  to  controvert  them.  And  since, 
if  we  were  to  abandon  reason,  we  should  be  exclud¬ 
ing  ourselves  from  the  sphere  in  which  truth  and 
falsity  have  meaning,  we  are  therefore  justified  in 
claiming  them  as  “necessary”  truths.  In  a  way  they 
depend  on  the  self-evident  truth  that  two  contradic¬ 
tory  propositions  cannot  both  hold  good;  but  not  in 
the  sense  that  they  can  be  “deduced”  from  this. 
Rather,  they  offer  an  instance  of  contradiction,  but 
an  instance  which  is  given  a  peculiar  philosophical 
significance  by  the  fact  that,  of  the  two  contradic¬ 
tories,  one  gets  decisively  the  upper  hand  through 
our  inability  to  think  the  other  consistently  without 
presupposing  it.  In  its  general  form  the  truth  here 
reduces  itself  in  the  end  to  the  proposition  that  re¬ 
ality  is  a  rational  and  consistent  whole ;  the  attempt 
to  treat  it  as  irrational  is  self-contradictory,  in  view 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


117 


of  the  fact  that  such  a  judgment  can  be  passed  only 
as  we  already  presuppose  the  rational  principles 
that  make  judgment  possible. 

As  a  preliminary  to  considering  this  claim,  it  is 
well  to  be  clear  about  what  concretely  it  commits 
us  to.  Since  reason  is  an  empty  term  unless  it  stands 
for  the  particular  rational  structure  of  our  human 
ways  of  judging,  or  our  human  “minds,”  what  it 
asserts  is,  that  I  can  be  entirely  certain  that  what 
my  reason — qua  human  being — tells  me  is  the  na¬ 
ture  of  the  world  must  actually  be  its  nature;  I  can¬ 
not  on  a  grand  scale  be  mistaken.  But  this  proposi¬ 
tion — that  reality  must,  not  does,  conform  to  my 
mind — seems  when  it  is  examined  on  its  merits  not 
without  its  dubious  features.  The  doubt  is  not  purely 
academic,  but  is  based  upon  positive  reasons  for 
holding  that  my  mind  may  lead  me  into  error;  and 
I  can  readily  imagine  circumstances — in  terms,  say, 
of  Descartes’  devil — which  theoretically  would 
make  such  error  thoroughgoing.  Even  though  while 
I  am  occupied  with  it  I  may  find  the  idealistic  argu¬ 
ment  plausible  and  not  easy  to  refute,  it  is  difficult 
to  view  the  outcome  without  a  returning  sense  of 
the  apparent  presumptuousness  of  its  claims,  which 
appreciably  weakens  its  appeal.  At  best  my  state  of 
mind  is  apt  to  be  not  so  much  a  whole-hearted  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  the  result,  as  it  is  an  admission  that  I 
fail  to  find  any  flaw  in  the  reasoning;  and  what  is 
the  good  of  a  belief  in  certainty  unless  the  belief  it¬ 
self  is  certain? 


1 18 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


There  is  one  presupposition,  it  is  true,  under 
which  the  conclusion  does  appear  to  follow.  If  re¬ 
ality  is  identified  once  more,,  after  the  common 
habit  of  idealists,  with  the  content  of  knowledge 
taken  as  a  logical  or  rational  content,  then  it  seems 
to  be  a  necessary  consequence  that  reality  follows 
the  laws  of  reason.  The  content  of  reality  is  just  a 
content  of  reason,  and  of  course  cannot  violate  its 
own  nature.  But  this  only  means  that  if  one  assumes 
to  begin  with  the  thing  to  be  established — the 
validity  of  a  certain  conception  of  reality — the 
same  conception  will  naturally  emerge  in  the  conclu¬ 
sion;  and  such  a  line  of  proof  has  commonly  been 
frowned  upon  by  the  logic  books. 

Meanwhile  there  is  a  way  to  evade  the  argument 
if  we  start  with  the  alternative  assumption  which  I 
have  been  adopting,  and  make  truth  consist  in  the 
reference  of  an  intellectual  content  to  a  further  and 
independent  real.  To  say  that  reality  is  irrational 
would  then  have  the  meaning,  that  if  I  could — 
which  I  cannot — absorb  the  real  world  into  my  ex¬ 
perience,  I  should  find  that  it  does  not  meet  any  ex¬ 
pectations  that  my  rational  mind  is  competent  to 
form.  There  is  nothing  unintelligible  in  such  a  state¬ 
ment.  And  I  must  as  a  matter  of  fact  be  able  to 
think  of  the  possibility  of  something  that  is  non-ra- 
tional,  for  I  am  at  present  talking  about  it,  and  my 
adversary  is  refuting  me  on  the  assumption  that  he 
knows  what  I  mean.  To  turn  about  now  and  say  that 
the  thought  of  the  non-rational  is  itself  a  thought  of 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


H9 


the  rational,  since  it  is  a  thought,  seems  very  much 
like  verbal  juggling;  we  have  an  idea,  and  then  sud¬ 
denly  we  find  that  we  haven’t  it  at  all,  but  a  quite 
different  idea  instead.  Either  then  we  are  mistaken 
in  thinking  that  we  ever  had  the  idea  of  the  non- 
rational,  which  makes  nonsense  of  the  whole  dis¬ 
cussion,  or  the  idea  is  possible,  in  which  case  no 
argument  can  prove  it  impossible.  And  if  I  can  think 
of  a  non-rational  reality,  what  becomes  of  the  im¬ 
possibility  that  it  should  exist  through  the  impos¬ 
sibility  of  thinking  it? 

What  really  is  evident  here  is,  not  that  the 
thought  of  the  non-rational  is  a  thought  of  the  ra¬ 
tional,  but  that  the  thought  of  the  non-rational  is  a 
rational  thought,  which  is  an  altogether  different 
thing.  In  thinking  of  reality  I  must  indeed  follow 
the  laws  of  thinking;  but  why  should  this  mean 
that  reality  must  follow  the  laws  of  thinking?  I 
cannot,  it  is  argued,  say  that  it  is  true  that  reality 
is  irrational,  because  in  calling  it  true,  I  am  imply¬ 
ing  that  reality  is  following  the  laws  of  truth.  But 
in  point  of  fact  I  am  not  applying  the  word  “true” 
to  reality,  but  only  to  the  judgment;  the  reality  is, 
and  that  is  all.  If  I  were  to  say  that  reality  is  irra¬ 
tional,  and  also  at  the  same  time  that  I  can  know 
concretely  wherein  its  irrational  character  consists, 
I  should  no  doubt  be  contradicting  myself ;  but  this 
is  not  what  I  am  saying.  And  I  fail  entirely  to  see 
why  there  might  not  be  a  portion  of  reality  so  con¬ 
stituted  with  standards  of  its  own  that,  by  the  use 


120 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH4? 


of  them,  it  should  be  able  to  think  the  possibility 
of  other  reality  such  as  does  not  meet  the  same 
standards. 

To  all  this  it  may  perhaps  be  replied  that  in  draw¬ 
ing  a  distinction  between  reality  and  the  knowing 
process,  we  are  overlooking  the  fact  that  after  all 
my  reason  works  always  upon  the  real  world  as 
its  material,  and  refers  to  it.  My  thought  is  al¬ 
ways  about  the  object,  and  not  about  itself;  and 
this  carries  with  it  the  impossibility  that  reality 
should  be  self-contradictory,  and  not  merely  the 
conclusion  that  I  cannot  logically  contradict  my¬ 
self.  And  I  am  perfectly  ready  to  grant  that  this 
is  so  in  a  certain  very  abstract  sense;  indeed  it 
follows  from  my  whole  position.  I  should  agree 
that  we  find  ourselves  unable  to  doubt  the  ration¬ 
ality  of  the  world,  in  so  far  as  this  means  only  that 
it  is  literally  impossible  for  us  to  hold  two  contra¬ 
dictory  beliefs  about  reality  when  we  once  see  them 
to  be  contradictory — the  belief,  for  example,  both 
that  an  object  is  white  and  that  it  is  not  white,  in 
the  same  sense;  when  I  try  to  think  both  proposi¬ 
tions  together,  the  attempt  breaks  down.  And  so  to 
this  extent  the  law  of  contradiction  holds  of  things , 
and  is  not  merely  a  “mental”  law.  While  I  do  not 
feel  sure  a  priori  and  in  the  abstract  that  nothing 
can  be  unless  I  am  able  to  think  it,  yet  concretely  I 
cannot  believe  something  to  be  what  my  knowing 
constitution  makes  it  impossible  for  me  to  believe  it 
to  be.  And  since,  for  me,  reality  is  accepted  only  as 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


121 


guaranteed  by  belief,  I  shall  always  count  on  reality 
being  self-consistent  in  so  far  as  I  take  the  trouble 
to  think  about  reality  at  all. 

But  the  results  for  philosophy  of  this  conclusion 
fall  far  short  of  idealistic  demands.  So  long  as  the 
possibility  exists  of  withholding  belief  from  both 
the  contradictory  assertions,  and  leaving  the  mind 
in  complete  suspense,  we  at  least  remain  without 
any  knowledge  in  particular  about  the  world.  It  is 
true  that  while  I  do  not  have  to  make  a  choice,  I 
am  forced  to  the  abstract  conclusion  that  one  or  the 
other  of  them  must  be  accepted.  I  cannot,  in  other 
words,  believe  the  world  to  be  strictly  irrational,  if 
this  signifies  the  presence  of  some  positive  character 
attaching  to  it  that  would  involve  the  exercise  of 
my  reason  in  the  way  of  assertion  and  denial  simul¬ 
taneously.  But  I  can  very  well  conceive  that  it  may 
fail  to  fit  into  any  concrete  form  of  rational  under¬ 
standing  which  my  human  way  of  viewing  things 
can  compass.  And  while,  as  I  have  said,  a  cautious 
scepticism  would  have  to  admit  that  it  is  one  thing 
or  the  other,  either  as  we  think  it  or  existing  in  some 
different  way,  this  is  a  sort  of  truth  which  it  is 
equally  unimportant  for  agnosticism  to  avoid  or  for 
rationalism  to  defend. 

Strictly  speaking,  the  law  of  contradiction  be¬ 
comes  concretely  a  decisive  factor  in  our  thinking 
only  when  it  is  a  question,  not  of  the  nature  of  re¬ 
ality,  but  of  the  consistency  of  our  beliefs  and  rea¬ 
soning  processes.  Its  function  is  to  tell  us,  not  that 


122 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


any  belief  must  be  accepted  as  true,  but  that  certain 
beliefs  must  be  rejected,  because  they  are  not  con¬ 
sistent  with  something  else  that,  for  independent 
reasons,  we  are  unwilling  to  give  up;  or,  more  par¬ 
ticularly,  that  certain  arguments  are  invalid  be¬ 
cause  they  make  use  of  the  assumptions  which  it  is 
their  outcome  to  disprove.  It  is  a  weapon  of  critical 
attack,  and  not  of  construction.  At  best,  therefore, 
all  that  it  can  do  in  the  present  case  is  to  convict  of 
inner  inconsistency  the  argument  of  the  man  who 
sets  out  to  prove  by  reason  that  the  world  must  be 
irrational,  since  “must”  is  a  rational  term.  But  it 
cannot  lead  us  to  reject  necessarily  an  hypothesis  of 
non-rationality,  because  what  this  involves  is,  again, 
not  the  assumption  that  for  thinking  absence  of  con¬ 
tradiction  is  not  essential,  but  the  assertion  that  to 
existence  the  conditions  which  give  rise  to  knowl¬ 
edge  may  fail  to  apply. 

In  objective  idealism,  for  the  most  part,  the  logi¬ 
cal  emphasis  is  so  entangled  with  the  psychological 
and  the  existential — or  at  least  with  terminology 
which  suggests  these  latter — that  the  theoretical 
bearings  and  consequences  are  not  infrequently  ob¬ 
scured.  It  is  one  special  merit  of  neo-realism  that  it 
has  made  it  possible  to  put  the  problems  here  very 
much  more  sharply,  by  its  novel  and  to  some  extent 
its  justified  emphasis  on  the  part  which  logical  en¬ 
tities  or  essences  play,  not  as  immediately  convert¬ 
ible  with  the  universe,  but  as  special  objects  of 
knowledge  in  the  universe.  That  in  this  way  it  calls 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


123 


attention  to  a  highly  important  aspect  of  the  real 
world,  I  should  regard  as  unquestionable. 

I  have  already  indicated  what  on  the  other  hand 
appears  to  me  the  primary  source  of  the  deficiencies 
of  such  a  theory  of  knowledge.  What  the  neo-realist 
calls  the  object  of  knowledge  is  indeed  an  essential 
factor  in  the  knowledge  situation;  but  it  is  not  the 
“object.”  And  there  is  one  difficulty  in  particular 
which  results  from  this  on  which  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  dwell  a  little  further — a  difficulty  which 
has  received  proportionally  a  large  amount  of  notice 
from  the  neo-realists,  but  which  has  failed  to  yield 
readily  to  treatment.  A  theory  which  presupposes 
the  direct  presence  of  reality  itself  in  order  to  ex¬ 
plain  the  experience  of  knowing  and  perceiving, 
finds  it  hard  to  account  for  the  fact  of  error,  since 
an  object  which  is  there  in  its  own  person  must  ap¬ 
parently  be  whatever  it  appears  to  be.  The  advan¬ 
tage  which  the  doctrine  of  the  present  essay  has 
in  this  connection  should  be  obvious.  The  ideal 
content  or  the  “what”  of  knowledge  must  indeed 
be  present  to  the  mind  if  any  character  is  to  be 
assigned  to  reality;  and  this  “essence”  is  in  every 
case  just  itself  and  nothing  else.  In  terms  of  the 
essence  there  is  a  sense,  too,  in  which  we  may  be 
said  always  to  be  dealing  with  “reality,”  since  no 
character  or  nature,  in  its  component  elements  at 
any  rate,  could  possibly  be  thought  by  us  had  it  not 
first  been  discovered  as  a  character  in  the  real  world. 
But  that  a  given  content  must  needs  be  real  in  a 


124 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


further  and  more  important  sense,  does  not  to  our 
natural  thinking  seem  at  all  to  be  the  case.  Knowl¬ 
edge  is  supposed  not  merely  to  involve  the  aware¬ 
ness  of  a  descriptive  content,  but  to  assert  the  actual 
existence  of  this  beyond  the  knowing  act;  and  our 
belief  may  and  often  will  be  wrong  when  we  assign 
a  given  content  to  a  special  location  or  a  particular 
combination  in  the  real  world.  Neo-realism  how¬ 
ever,  since  it  does  not  recognize  this  distinction  be¬ 
tween  the  presence  of  the  character  to  the  awareness 
of  the  knower  and  its  presence  in  the  object  known, 
is  prevented  from  admitting  this;  and  in  conse¬ 
quence  the  possibility  of  error  becomes  a  problem. 

If  we  exclude  a  device,  reminiscent  alike  of  ideal¬ 
ism  and  of  pragmatism,  to  which  Professor  Alexan¬ 
der  at  times  resorts — the  identification  of  error, 
namely,  with  the  experience  of  recognizing  error, 
and  its  consequent  explanation  in  terms  of  a  social 
judgment  which  clashes  with  a  merely  personal  one 
— there  is  only  one  very  plausible  account  of  the 
matter  that  neo-realism  has  suggested.  And  since  this 
is  common  to  writers  who  differ  rather  widely  on  a 
number  of  other  important  points,  it  may  perhaps 
be  taken  as  semi-official.  The  explanation  is  that 
while  all  objects  alike  are,  by  the  very  fact  of  their 
being  apprehended  at  all,  necessarily  elements  of 
the  real  world,  there  may  also  be  certain  relation¬ 
ships  induced  upon  them  by  the  activity  of  the  mind 
itself,  such  as  do  not  correctly  represent  the  actual 
facts.  The  mind  may  bring  “objects”  into  connec- 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


125 


tions  where  they  do  not  really  belong,  or  it  may 
leave  out  relations  essential  to  their  proper  under¬ 
standing;  and  in  this  way  error  may  arise  without 
compromising  the  reality  of  the  objects  themselves. 

That  this  thesis  has  an  apparent  plausibility  there 
is  no  occasion  to  deny.  And  the  reason  will  be  evi¬ 
dent  when  we  translate  it  into  more  familiar  terms. 
If  the  mind  is  in  possession  of  the  essences  of  the 
world  of  things  in  the  form  of  “ideas,”  which  are  not 
however  identically  the  things  themselves,  there  is 
nothing  whatever  against  its  having  the  ability  to 
manipulate  these  ideas  in  ways  that  depart  more  or 
less  widely  from  the  real  facts.  But  the  neo-realist, 
who  repudiates  ideas,  has  a  much  more  difficult 
problem  on  his  hands.  It  would  not,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  be  very  inconsistent  to  suppose  that  the  mind 
can  sin  by  way  of  omission  on  neo-real istic  terms. 
It  may  have  a  blind  spot  that  causes  it  to  overlook 
elements  of  reality  that  actually  are  there,  and  so  its 
apprehension  of  the  world  may  be  mutilated.  But 
while  this  accounts  for  the  incompleteness  of  our 
knowledge,  and  its  varying  complexion  at  different 
times  and  for  different  persons,  it  does  not  account 
for  error  on  its  positive  side.  We  should  indeed  have 
error  were  this  partial  knowledge  asserted  by  us  to 
be  complete;  and  accordingly  neo-realism  shares 
again  with  idealism  a  disposition  to  dally  with  the 
definition  of  error  as  a  will  to  infallibility  and  om¬ 
niscience.  But  in  any  case  no  such  definition  will 
cover  more  than  a  very  small  proportion  of  the  facts. 


126 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


That  I  am  open-minded,  and  aware  of  my  limita¬ 
tions,  still  does  not  prevent  my  opinions  from  being 
in  error  in  so  far  as  they  are  in  error;  the  essence  of 
error  lies  in  wrong  belief,  not  in  dogmatic  belief. 

Meanwhile  when  we  turn  from  incompleteness  of 
belief  to  positive  error,  the  neo-realistic  explanation 
meets  with  serious  objections.  My  “mind”  brings, 
we  will  say,  a  human  head  into  relation  to  a  horse’s 
body,  where  it  does  not  belong;  and  in  consequence 
I  think  a  centaur.  But  supposedly  my  theory  of 
knowledge  is  meant  to  apply  to  relations  as  well  as 
to  qualities.  And  accordingly  the  question  must 
again  be  asked:  If  an  object  of  knowledge  is  known 
only  through  its  immediate  presence  to  awareness, 
how  can  I  think  a  relation  which  is  not,  and  so  be  in 
error  about  it?  The  relation  also,  if  it  is  thought, 
would  appear  actually  to  be  just  what  it  is  thought 
as  being.  To  avoid  the  difficulty,  it  may  perhaps  be 
urged  that  though  the  particular  instance  of  the  re¬ 
lationship  is  not  real,  the  relation  as  such  is  real — is 
an  aspect,  namely,  of  the  real  world;  and  this  once 
more  is  doubtless  true.  No  specific  character  of  any 
sort  can  be  thought  which  is  not  first  found  in  reality 
itself.  But  in  any  case  this  still  leaves  very  much  to 
be  accounted  for.  What  is  the  connection  between  an 
abstract  universal,  and  the  world  of  existing  par¬ 
ticulars  with  the  specific  relationships  between 
them?  and  how  does  a  solution  which  presupposes 
only  a  knowledge  of  the  former  help  us  with  the 
latter  also?  Or  do  we  perhaps  know  universals  only, 


SOME  COMPETING  THEORIES 


127 


and  is  the  universe  itself  nothing  but  a  complex  of 
universals?  To  such  questions  there  are  as  yet  no 
authoritative  answers.  And  in  the  absence  of  a  well- 
defined  solution,  we  shall  do  best  to  turn  from  neo¬ 
realism  therefore,  to  a  more  independent  examina¬ 
tion  of  certain  of  the  points  involved. 


RELATIONS 


IT  has  been  evident  everywhere  in  what  has  gone 
before,  that  a  consideration  of  the  part  that  “es¬ 
sences”  play  in  knowledge,  whether  these  be  inter¬ 
preted  in  an  idealistic,  or  a  neo-realistic,  or  a  “dual- 
istic”  sense,  comes  up  continually  against  the  fact 
or  being  of  relations,  and  cannot  be  finally  settled 
apart  from  some  theory  about  these  elusive  entities. 
To  the  nature  of  relationships  I  shall  therefore  now 
briefly  revert,  though  I  shall  hardly  expect  to  carry 
much  conviction  in  the  remarks  I  am  going  on  to 
make. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  begin  the  inquiry  by  ex¬ 
amining  a  term  which  has  come  to  be  used  rather 
generally  in  this  connection — the  term  “subsist¬ 
ence.”  In  its  current  usage,  subsistence  has,  to  begin 
with,  one  meaning  to  which  no  exception  need  be 
taken.  It  may  refer,  that  is,  to  any  possible  term  that 
stands  for  a  logical  aspect  or  content  of  human 
thinking.  This  is  unexceptionable  for  the  reason  that 
in  so  far  it  is  only  a  more  or  less  useful  matter  of 
terminology,  which  involves  of  necessity  no  special 
metaphysical  interpretation.  It  is  nothing  more  than 
a  name  for  any  identifiable  fact  of  essence  or  of 
human  meaning - — any  bit  of  descriptive  content  to 
which  a  term  can  be  applied.  This  is  perhaps  to  re¬ 
duce  to  unduly  modest  proportions  that  realm  of 
logical  entities  which  recently  has  played  such  an 


RELATIONS 


129 


impressive  role  in  generating  and  explaining  the  cos¬ 
mos;  but  still,  translated  into  a  universe  of  discourse 
easier  for  me  to  find  my  way  in,  it  enables  me  to 
follow  after  a  fashion  much  of  what  the  realist  has 
to  say.  For  me  indeed,  as  I  have  sufficiently  made 
clear,  “description”  calls  up  a  much  more  concrete 
situation  than  for  the  realist,  since  a  description  is 
always  somebody' s  description  of  something;  and  I 
can  only  envy  the  facility  with  which  philosophers 
are  able  to  simplify  the  problem  by  dropping  out  of 
their  calculations  this  reference  to  existence — not 
the  idea  of  existence  but  the  real  thing — implied  in 
the  words  “somebody”  and  “something.”  Still  I  can, 
by  abstraction,  get  before  me  the  field  of  descriptive 
terms  or  entities  as  such;  and  by  confining  myself 
to  this  field,  I  seem,  as  I  say,  able  to  give  a  sense  to 
all  but  the  more  cryptic  utterances  of  the  newer 
school.  In  this  interpretation  therefore,  being,  or  sub¬ 
sistence,  would  stand  simply  for  the  possibility  of 
belonging  to  such  a  realm,  and  of  becoming  an  iden¬ 
tical  content  of  thought  or  meaning,  a  part  of  the 
universe  of  discourse. 

In  closer  connection  with  an  ultimate  metaphysics 
is  a  further  interpretation  of  subsistence,  which  also 
conveys  to  me  a  meaning  sufficiently  precise.  Among 
other  contents  of  this  descriptive  world  abstracted 
from  the  things  which  it  describes,  will  be  found  re¬ 
lations;  and  these  relations  would  appear  to  have  a 
further  status,  to  which  equally  the  term  in  a  differ¬ 
ent  and  more  distinctive  sense  could  be  applied.  Be- 


130 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


sides  being  itself  a  term  or  a  meaning,  a  relation  is 
also  something  that  is  meant.  It  is  a  fact  to  be  dis¬ 
covered  and  identified  in  connection  with  the  world 
which  knowledge  grasps.  It  does  not  simply  have 
being  as  a  logical  concept  in  human  discourse,  but  is 
in  some  sense  or  other  that  of  which  a  logical  propo¬ 
sition  can  be  true.  And  it  belongs  to  the  same  world 
to  which  its  terms  belong.  When  I  say  that  a  relation 
of  similarity  between  two  men  really  was  there  even 
before  any  human  being  had  occasion  to  notice  it, 
I  am  saying  more  than  that  such  a  relation  is  an  in¬ 
telligible  concept,  or  that  it  holds  between  two  logi¬ 
cal  entities  in  the  form  of  a  proposition.  It  holds 
between  the  men .  Nevertheless  while  the  new  rela¬ 
tionships  which  I  discover  are  taken  as  belonging 
to  the  real  world  of  which  the  connected  terms  are  a 
description,  they  do  not  in  appearance  have  reality 
in  the  same  sense  in  which  things  do.  We  should 
hesitate  to  say  that  the  relation  of  nearness  between 
two  objects  “existed,”  as  we  say  that  the  objects 
exist.  But  nevertheless  it  is.  Here  accordingly  is  a 
second  fact  to  which  the  term  subsistence  might 
refer,  in  a  way  in  which  it  would  not  usually  be  re¬ 
garded  as  applying  to  purely  logical  entities  or 
“universals.” 

In  considering  this  status  of  relations,  it  may  be 
noted  first  that,  in  spite  of  our  hesitation  in  saying 
that  they  exist,  they  nevertheless  seem  always  to 
presuppose  existence.  While  relations  are  without 
being  recognized,  they  apparently  cannot  exist,  or 


RELATIONS 


131 

subsist,  or  have  reality  in  any  sense  whatsoever, 
except  as  there  are  existences,  actual  or  imagined, 
for  them  to  hold  between;  and  we  cannot  imagine 
anything  except  as  we  have  a  prior  basis  for  it  in 
actual  experience.  An  ultimately  independent  realm 
of  subsisting  relationships  has  so  far  as  I  can  see  no 
meaning  at  all.  Relations  involve  terms;  and  at 
least  these  terms  originate  in  experience  only  by  way 
of  the  concrete  and  the  actual.  Relations  hold  in¬ 
deed,  not  between  “things,”  but  between  specific 
distinguishable  aspects  of  things.  If  I  ask  what  is 
the  relationship  between  an  isosceles  triangle  and 
the  north  pole,  or  between  the  solar  system  and  the 
last  best  seller,  there  is  no  meaning  to  the  question 
until  I  go  on  to  inquire,  In  what  respect4?  But  while 
it  is  only  by  abstracting  thus  some  relevant  aspect 
of  character  that  I  am  able  to  discover  a  determinate 
relation,  these  aspects  are  in  the  first  instance  al¬ 
ways  embedded  in  the  existing  world. 

Of  course  in  being  thus  abstracted,  a  quality  is  on 
the  way  to  being  turned  into  a  universal,  and  so 
brought  within  the  realm  within  which  logic  moves. 
And  it  might  be  that  such  conceptualized  products 
become  themselves  new  terms  of  a  different  sort  be¬ 
tween  which  further  relationships  hold,  at  one  re¬ 
move  or  more  from  the  concrete.  This,  if  true,  would 
not  compromise  my  contention  so  far,  since  no  uni¬ 
versal  can  be  found  which  do  not  have  their  start¬ 
ing  point  in  existents.  But  as  nearly  as  I  can  make 
out  it  is  not  true. 


*32 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


If  relations  in  their  primary  intention  are  be¬ 
tween  specific  real  aspects  of  the  existing  world,  it 
is  equally  so  that  our  first  step  at  any  rate  away  from 
existents  is  through  the  imagination,  which  still 
deals  with  the  particular,  and  operates  only  by 
separating  and  recombining  definite  qualities  that 
are  taken  over  from  experience.  It  is  not  between 
abstract  redness  and  greenness  that  I  discover  a  rela¬ 
tion  of  difference,  but  between  a  patch  of  red  and  a 
patch  of  green,  sensed  or  imaged.  Once  found  in  the 
concrete,  all  the  elements  of  the  situation,  including 
the  relation,  can  be  translated  into  conceptual 
terms;  but  the  relation  is  put  in  the  conceptual 
realm,  not  first  discovered  in  it.  Is  now  this  to  be 
taken  as  universally  the  case?  Or  is  there  a  meaning 
in  the  comparison  of  two  concepts  as  such ? 

There  certainly  appears  to  be  some  sense  in  which 
our  conceptions,  or  our  meanings,  develop  implica¬ 
tions  on  a  different  level  from  those  that  hold  in 
the  world  of  things  and  agents.  It  is  this  that  gives 
point  to  the  claim  that  logic  is  an  affair  of  human 
reason ,  or  of  the  “laws  of  thought” — a  claim  not 
quite  satisfactorily  disposed  of  by  the  arguments  of 
the  neo- realists.  We  certainly  do  make  some  dis¬ 
tinction  between  the  natural  sciences  and  logic,  and 
feel  that  the  “objectivity”  of  the  two  is  not  on  alto¬ 
gether  the  same  footing;  it  is  an  apparently  well- 
grounded  persuasion  that  “classes”  are  not  to  be 
found  in  nature,  but  are  the  outcome  of  human 
thinking.  What  exists  is  a  number  of  individuals 


RELATIONS 


133 


with  a  great  variety  of  relationships  between  them, 
among  which  is  the  eminently  external  and  passive 
relationship  involved  in  the  possession  of  common 
traits;  and  it  is  necessary  not  only  that  there  should 
be  this  similarity,  but  that  the  common  traits  should 
be  thought  together  and  their  potential  unity  made 
explicit,  before  we  get  what  is  strictly  a  class  term. 
Nature  is  not  falsified  by  this  procedure;  classes 
embody  something  that  is  really  so.  But  they  em¬ 
body  it  in  a  different  way.  The  common  characters 
in  the  outer  world  are  found  in  particular  existents, 
and  there  only;  and  it  is  just  by  reason  of  being  thus 
particularized  that  they  are  able  to  play  their  part 
in  the  seething  life  of  nature  itself.  In  the  class  term 
they  are  removed  from  all  this  active  participation 
in  events,  and  are  held  just  as  innocuous  and  blood¬ 
less  characters  before  the  mind.  But  also  bv  virtue 
of  this  removal  from  a  divided  existence  they  now 
can  be  brought  into  a  form  of  unity  new  to  them — 
a  unity  dependent  upon  conscious  manipulation  and 
recognition. 

To  a  certain  extent  this  does  not  differentiate 
logic  from  science.  Science  also  is  concerned  to  gather 
up  the  universal  aspects  of  the  world  of  nature  in  a 
form  that  does  not  as  such  have  existence,  as  in¬ 
dividuals  exist.  This  is  only  to  say,  however,  that 
science  is  not  reality,  but  a  description  of  reality,  a 
form  of  thought  or  knowledge;  and  there  is  nothing 
against  supposing  the  characteristics  it  transcribes  to 
constitute  the  very  laws  of  the  existent  and  actively 


134 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


functioning  world.  But  when  we  turn  to  the  par¬ 
ticular  relationships  that  are  characteristically  logi¬ 
cal,  it  becomes  more  doubtful  in  what  sense  this 
statement  remains  true.  Undoubtedly  logic  must 
be  based  on  the  discovery  of  objectively  valid  truths. 
But  these  truths  are  no  longer  supposed  to  reveal,  as 
in  the  case  of  science,  the  actual  machinery  of  the 
real  world  that  makes  the  wheels  go  round.  They 
provide,  not  for  explaining  events,  but  for  explain¬ 
ing  inference ,  which  is  a  very  different  thing.  The 
process  whereby  we  attain  to  and  validate  by  rea¬ 
son  our  scientific  knowledge  is  quite  other  than  the 
processes  of  nature  herself,  and  exemplifies  differ¬ 
ent  laws,  although  our  inferences  must  be  based  on 
truths  about  this  very  world  of  objective  nature  in 
order  to  have  any  relevancy  to  scientific  fact. 

To  remove  any  appearance  of  conflict  here,  it  may 
naturally  be  supposed  therefore  that  when  the  con¬ 
tent  of  the  world  becomes  a  conceptual  construct 
on  a  new  level  of  reality,  it  also  becomes  capable  of 
showing  a  new  set  of  relationships  to  other  thought 
content;  and  that  it  is  these  new  relationships  that 
make  it  possible  to  reason,  and  so  constitute  the  field 
of  logic.  Thus,  it  may  be  said,  it  is  not  enough  for 
logic  that  we  should  have  the  mind  dealing  with 
particular  characters  of  reality.  If  I  take  a  blue 
color  and  compare  it  with  a  red,  noting  the  dissimi¬ 
larity,  the  result  has  no  logical  significance.  It  is 
merely  one  thing  more  I  have  discovered  about  the 
objective  world  in  which  colors  exist.  Or  if  I  note 


RELATIONS 


135 


the  time  succession  of  two  events,  this  time  relation¬ 
ship  is  equally  a  new  objective  fact.  No  dealing 
with  particulars  has  any  logical  value;  this  was  the 
logical  defect  in  the  association  doctrine.  One 
thought  may  as  a  matter  of  fact  call  up  another.  But 
in  so  far  we  are  simply  on  the  plane  of  natural  his¬ 
tory  and  causality,  and  nothing  in  the  way  of  logical 
compulsion  can  be  got  out  of  it;  it  gives  no  basis 
for  inference.  Inference  is  possible  only  as  we  deal, 
not  with  natural  objects,  but  with  artificial  thought 
constructs  or  universals,  that  have  no  existence  as 
such  in  the  natural  universe. 

But  while  this  seems  indeed  to  be  the  fact,  it  does 
not  when  interpreted  essentially  change  the  thesis 
with  which  I  started  out.  A  comparison  of  “mean¬ 
ings,”  to  be  intelligible,  has  still  to  utilize,  for  the 
discovery  of  these  new  relationships,  particular  bits 
of  concrete  quality,  though  it  uses  them  in  new  con¬ 
nections.  The  most  obvious  account  of  the  matter 
here  is  to  say  that  the  relations  within  the  world  of 
meanings  or  of  universals  are  reducible  to  the  cate¬ 
gory  of  whole  and  part.  “Mortal”  is  a  part  of  my 
meaning  when  I  think  of  “man,”  and  it  is  in  view  of 
this  that  I  am  justified  in  predicating  mortality  of 
anything  I  accept  as  a  man.  But  here  we  are  not 
dispensing  with  the  concrete.  It  can  be  determined 
whether  a  given  quality  is  among  the  list  that  make 
up  the  concept  man  only  as  we  particularize  the 
meaning  attached  to  the  words;  and  the  process  of 
doing  this  is  one  that  deals  with  specific  bits  of  con- 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


136 

tent,  and  not  with  some  vague  new  kind  of  entity 
called  a  universal.  The  character  of  universality  it¬ 
self  is  not  a  source  of  peculiar  relations,  but  is  merely 
the  will  to  extend  these  concrete  connections  beyond 
the  case  where  they  are  intuited,  and  to  infer  that 
they  are  going  to  be  found  in  other  circumstances 
also;  and  accordingly  the  outcome  is  always  a  more 
or  less  probable  “that,”  and  never  a  “why,”  or  an 
explanation. 

There  is  another  statement  that  might  be  sug¬ 
gested  to  stand  for  the  relation  peculiarly  involved 
in  the  logical  field — that  in  terms  of  identity  of 
meaning.  But  it  seems  questionable  whether  we 
are  justified  in  calling  identity  a  relation  at  all.  A 
relation  with  only  one  term  is  an  anomaly  at  best. 
Nor  do  we  seem  justified  in  trying  to  make  identity 
more  intelligible  by  reducing  it  to  an  identity  for 
human  purposes,  or  to  the  possibility  of  practical 
substitution;  for  to  state  this  we  have  to  talk  about 
the  same  purpose,  and  so  use  the  word  to  be  defined. 
It  is  simpler  to  say  that  identity  stands  merely  for 
the  fact  that  we  do  not  discover  any  relation  of  dif¬ 
ference  when  we  look  for  it.  This  presupposes  a 
complex  situation;  but  the  identity  is  not  analyzable 
into  this  relational  complexity.  The  identity  of  a 
thing  is  just  itself;  I  really  see  no  way  of  turning 
it  into  anything  else.  If  indeed  we  reduce  identity 
thus  to  quality  or  being,  we  also  have  to  note  that 
it  is  recognized  as  identical  only  under  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  repetition;  and  this  is  apparently  the  reason 


RELATIONS 


*37 


why  we  tend  to  think  of  it  as  a  relationship.  But  if 
we  try  to  take  it,  again,  as  itself  a  relation  between 
the  two  states  of  the  identical  object,  or  the  two 
acts  of  recognition,  we  are  stopped  by  the  evident 
fact  that  these  are  not  identical,  but  different. 

Supposing  it  however  to  be  granted  that  the  pre¬ 
ceding  thesis  is  valid,  and  that  relations  have  no 
being  in  any  sense  apart  from  particulars  that  pre¬ 
suppose  an  existing  world,  the  original  problem  still 
remains.  What  is  the  being  of  relations  in  this 
world4?  It  is  to  this  that  I  propose  now  to  turn 
briefly. 

It  is  very  probable  that  there  are  philosophers  to 
whom  a  difficulty  here  will  appear  more  or  less 
gratuitous.  To  one  who  is  accustomed  to  do  his 
speculative  thinking  exclusively  in  logical  terms,  it 
may  come  to  seem  a  matter  of  course  that  a  relation 
should  be  accepted  as  an  ultimate  sort  of  entity, 
which  has  to  be  taken  simply  at  its  face  value.  In 
practice  indeed  such  an  attitude  cannot  well  be 
avoided.  Relations  are  in  some  sense  real,  and  any 
attempt  to  eliminate  them  from  the  content  of  the 
universe  will  necessarily  fail.  Nevertheless  a  more 
empirical  type  of  mind,  accustomed  to  take  the 
concrete  and  the  existing  as  its  standard  of  the  real, 
will  find  some  trouble  in  stopping  at  this  point.  It 
cannot  easily  avoid  the  feeling  that  relationships  are 
left  hanging  in  the  air,  outside  the  sort  of  universe 
in  which  it  is  most  at  home.  How  is  one  to  figure  to 
himself  this  “being”  which  is  even  though  it  does  not 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


138 

exist?  At  best  the  universe  appears  to  have  split  up 
into  two  grades  of  reality,  difficult  to  adjust  men¬ 
tally.  This  particular  duality  other  philosophers 
may  avoid  by  abandoning  the  notion  of  existence  as 
a  brute  fact  of  being,  and  by  defining  “reality” 
simply  in  logical  terms.  But  the  “dualist”  is  pre¬ 
vented  by  his  presuppositions — or  perhaps  by  his 
mental  limitations — from  this  resource;  and  accord¬ 
ingly  he  is  apt  to  find  the  situation  puzzling  and  un¬ 
satisfactory.  It  would  flatter  his  prejudices  were  he 
able  to  conceive  the  reality  of  relations  without 
being  forced  to  posit  a  special  realm  of  subsistence; 
and  I  propose  accordingly  now  to  canvass  very 
tentatively  such  a  possibility. 

On  the  whole  it  would  appear  that  categories 
roughly  form  a  scale,  at  one  end  of  which  the  par¬ 
ticular  difficulty  here  exploited  tends  to  disappear. 
If  we  take  the  complex  relationship  of  purpose, 
there  seems  to  be  a  sense  in  which  this  has  its  sole 
being  within  a  conscious  unity  of  experience  as  an 
existent  fact  of  feeling.  It  is  not  that  purpose  does 
not  imply  many  things  which  are  external  to  the 
self  and  its  experience.  But  in  its  distinctive  charac¬ 
ter  end,  or  significance,  or  meaning,  is  a  conscious 
whole,  a  sense  of  internal  harmony  and  apprecia¬ 
tion.  Both  end  and  means  exist  beyond  this  experi¬ 
enced  whole.  But  they  are  purposive  only  in  so  far 
as  they  become  cognitive  elements  bound  together 
by  their  connection  with  an  inner  unity  of  feeling; 
apart  from  this,  they  would  appear  only  as  sequences 


RELATIONS 


139 


in  an  unmeaning  universe.  This  position  may  need 
to  be  qualified  presently.  But  meanwhile  it  seems 
to  have  a  sufficient  measure  of  truth,  at  least,  to  re¬ 
lieve  in  this  case  the  difficulty  about  the  independent 
being  of  relations — independent,  that  is,  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  not  qualifications  of  a  single 
unified  experience  that  has  the  status  of  existence. 

It  is  when  we  pass  to  the  other  end  of  the  scale, 
and  consider  the  simplest  and  most  ultimate  rela¬ 
tions  such  as  that  of  difference,  that  the  point  of  the 
difficulty  becomes  most  apparent.  For  that  which 
we  think  in  the  case  of  difference  seems  to  be  some¬ 
thing  that  falls  between  many  realities  which  do 
not,  and  some  of  which  to  all  appearance  cannot, 
belong  together  in  a  single  experienced  whole.  Is  it 
possible  to  interpret  this  without  falling  back  on  a 
status  of  subsistence  that  does  not  as  such  “exist”? 

In  looking  for  an  answer,  we  may  start  from  what 
lies  closest  at  hand.  “Difference,”  for  the  theory  I 
have  advocated,  must  somehow  be  present  as  a  form 
of  mental  content,  or  there  could  be  no  basis  for  the 
apprehension  of  the  essence  by  means  of  which  we 
think  it;  what  then  is  the  relation  of  difference  im¬ 
mediately  experienced  as?  I  can  see  no  way  of  avoid¬ 
ing  the  conclusion  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
specific  feeling  of  difference,  just  as  there  is  a  feeling 
of  redness.  There  are  present  to  my  mind  two  con¬ 
tents,  each  what  it  is,  with  its  own  distinctive  na¬ 
ture;  and  when  I  pass  from  the  one  of  these  to  the 
other,  I  get  a  new  and  peculiar  experience  of  shock 


140 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


which  is  what  experientially  I  mean  by  their  dif¬ 
ference.  There  are  real  dialectical  difficulties  that 
such  a  statement  suggests.  But  when  I  look  to  the 
inner  experience  itself,  there  is  nothing  more  that  I 
can  personally  discover.  By  this  I  do  not  mean,  I 
should  want  to  make  perfectly  clear,  to  reduce  re¬ 
ality  to  separate  bits  of  “pure”  experience,  or  of 
mind  stuff.  Experience  is  actually  the  unified  fact 
it  seems  to  be,  and  difference  is  an  element  within 
its  wholeness.  It  is  not  the  addition  of  a  third  thing 
which,  under  pretence  of  bringing  together  what 
was  there  before,  really  adds  a  new  entity  to  be 
related ;  it  simply  identifies  a  piece  of  the  connective 
tissue  of  what  comes  to  us  in  the  first  place  as  a  one- 
in-many.  But  as  such  it  is,  again,  itself  embodied  in 
feeling  existence,  and  not  a  new  form  of  being. 

And  now  whatever  other  objections  this  may  raise, 
it  does  at  least  suggest  an  answer  to  the  immediate 
problem.  On  such  a  showing,  there  is  no  entity  which 
“subsists”  outside  the  realm  of  the  existent.  What  is 
real  is  on  the  one  hand  the  two  objects  of  cognition, 
and  on  the  other  the  feeling  which  they  arouse  when 
their  “natures”  are  reviewed  in  succession  by  the 
mind.  In  the  object  these  natures  are  concretely  em¬ 
bodied,  and  each  is  what  it  happens  to  be.  In  experi¬ 
ence  the  same  characters  attach  to  feeling  or  sensa¬ 
tion.  But  also  they  here  give  rise  to  another  feeling, 
which  has  its  own  specific  character;  and  the  judg¬ 
ment  of  difference  is  the  automatic  reference  of  this 
new  character,  along  with  the  original  contents,  to 


RELATIONS 


141 


an  objective  situation.  In  this  statement  there  is  left 
no  reality  of  a  tenuous  sort  ‘ 'between”  the  two  exist- 
ents.  And  if  it  be  said  that  this  is  to  deny  objectivity 
to  the  relation,  I  do  not  think  that  it  really  does  so 
in  any  undesirable  sense.  The  objective  character 
of  difference  is  precisely  the  fact,  not  that  something 
mysteriously  subsists  which  connects  two  reals,  but 
that  these  reals  do  have  each  its  own  positive  charac¬ 
ter,  which  characters,  entering  into  experience  in  the 
form  of  cognitive  marks,  do  actually  and  invariably 
have  the  result  which  we  call  the  feeling  of  differ¬ 
ence.  And  if  this  is  all  there  is  to  the  matter,  it  is 
understandable  why  such  a  character  as  that  of  dif¬ 
ference  seems  so  external  to  the  differing  entities, 
and  leaves  them  unchanged  when  their  difference  is 
perceived.  For  from  the  standpoint  of  these  entities 
themselves  the  sole  reality  is  their  separate  charac¬ 
ters,  and  they  enter  into  a  unity  only  for  a  perceiving 
conscious  “mind.” 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  a  conceivable  hypothe¬ 
sis  on  which  more  than  this  is  true.  Difference  as  a 
fact  of  feeling  might  actually  be  present  in  the  outer 
world  as  well,  if  we  were  willing  to  interpret  such 
a  world  as  itself  a  larger  experience  similar  to  our 
own.  But  this  would  involve  a  metaphysical  recon¬ 
struction  which  many  philosophers  would  not  ac¬ 
cept.  And  it  is  unnecessary  to  a  defence  of  objec¬ 
tivity,  in  the  sense  in  which  anything  that  stands  for 
the  uniform  outcome  of  definite  conditions  may  be 
regarded  as  a  revelation  of  the  real  constitution  of 


142 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


the  world,  something  objectively  grounded  or  valid, 
whether  or  not  it  “copies”  the  nature  of  the  extra¬ 
human  fact. 

The  apparent  “externality”  of  such  relations  as 
difference  and  similarity,  in  the  sense  that  they  do 
not  seem  to  make  a  difference  to  the  related  terms, 
suggests  meanwhile  that  some  further  explanation 
will  be  called  for  when  we  turn  to  still  another  sort 
of  relation,  which  stands  midway  between  the  two 
cases  hitherto  considered.  For  there  are  relations 
which,  while  they  hold  between  reals  that  seemingly 
do  not  belong  to  any  existential  unity,  yet  do  appear 
to  make  a  difference  to  the  character  of  these  reals. 
Causality  is  a  relation  which  to  all  appearance  may 
connect  two  objects  that  in  point  of  existence  are 
separate.  But  if  we  were  to  try  to  get  rid  of  causality 
also  as  a  real  “subsisting”  element  in  the  world 
beyond  us,  we  might  be  asked  to  explain  how  it  hap¬ 
pens  then  that  through  the  presence  of  a  cause  physi¬ 
cal  things  are  actually  altered  in  their  internal 
character.  What  is  itself  nothing  cannot  be  the 
medium  for  making  real  alterations. 

The  easiest  way  to  answer  this  would  of  course 
be  to  deny  that  a  difference  actually  is  made.  Causa¬ 
tion  is  itself  nothing  but  a  relation  of  the  sort  that 
does  not  alter  the  related  terms — a  relation  of  in¬ 
variable  succession,  to  take  the  simplest  theory;  the 
only  reals  are  the  separate  items  and  their  order. 
But  while  this  would  be  accepted  as  a  truism  by 
perhaps  the  majority  of  philosophers,  I  am  not  my- 


RELATIONS 


143 


self  disposed  to  adopt  it  without  qualification.  It 
seems  to  me  very  plain  that,  whatever  the  obscurities 
of  its  meaning,  there  is  a  sense  attaching  to  the  term 
causality  in  its  everyday  usage  which  cannot  be 
satisfied  to  drop  the  reference  to  a  connecting  bond, 
or  to  effective  agency.  “Cause”  simply  does  not  mean 
to  the  natural  mind  what  it  tends  to  mean  for  a 
scientific  definition;  and  even  the  scientist  is  con¬ 
tinually  lapsing  in  his  unguarded  moments  into  the 
more  familiar  notion.  To  leave  out  of  consideration 
the  less  easily  verifiable  matter  of  causation  in  the 
physical  world,  in  human  concerns,  at  any  rate,  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  come  within  hailing  distance  of 
our  ordinary  human  meanings  without  assuming 
that  men’s  ideas  and  plans  and  purposes  are  actually 
made  different  from  what  they  would  have  been  by 
the  intrusion  of  outside  realities.  If  arguments  in 
the  mouths  of  others  do  not  sometimes  “change  my 
mind,”  if  the  conduct  of  my  neighbor  does  not  set  up 
reactions  of  friendship  or  hostility  which  furnish 
actual  working  motives,  if  the  presence  of  appetizing 
food  does  not  tempt  me  to  eat,  if  these  and  a  thou¬ 
sand  other  instances  do  not  imply  an  active  and  ef¬ 
fective  influence  between  realities  that  are  not  in  any 
verifiable  sense  within  a  single  felt  unity  of  experi¬ 
ence,  then  we  might  as  well  give  up  trying  to  de¬ 
scribe  the  facts  of  human  experience  and  history  in 
a  form  that  represents  what  they  are  “ experienced 
as.” 

But  an  examination  of  this  instance  of  human  or 


144 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


interhuman  causality  will  perhaps  go  to  show  that 
the  case  is  not  so  different  from  the  preceding  ones 
as  would  appear.  Let  us  suppose  that,  when  my 
doctor  orders  rest  and  change,  I  decide  to  follow  his 
advice.  Here  we  have — assuming  of  course  the 
legitimacy  of  our  ordinary  beliefs — an  event,  the 
doctor’s  prescription,  lying  outside  the  range  of  my 
Own  inner  unity  of  feeling,  which  nevertheless  is 
not  merely  the  temporal  predecessor  of  a  change  in 
my  conduct,  but  which  I  can  hardly  avoid  speaking 
of  as  an  actual  influence  that  in  some  sense  helps 
to  bring  it  about.  But  here  also,  on  a  closer  scrutiny, 
the  necessity  for  a  subsistent  relation  hanging  in 
mid-air  between  two  forms  of  existence  will  tend  to 
disappear.  Within  the  experience  there  is  a  relation 
present — that  of  purpose.  And  it  may  be  conjectured 
that  the  notion  of  influence,  or  effectiveness,  has  its 
source  in  this  relationship  of  conscious  means  to  con¬ 
scious  end,  or  of  the  steps  of  a  process  to  its  active 
fulfilment,  which  purpose  implies — a  relationship 
that  actually  involves  in  an  empirically  verifiable 
form  the  sense  of  a  connecting  bond  which  is  the 
essence  of  the  common  notion  of  causation.  Mean¬ 
while  in  this  inner  experience  of  purpose,  the  part 
played  by  the  outer  fact  as  an  existence  offers  no 
particular  mystery.  It  enters  into  the  situation  only 
in  the  passive  role  of  being  known,  or  of  having  its 
nature  and  existence  recognized.  This  nature  exists 
in  its  own  right  outside  of  knowledge;  its  recogni¬ 
tion  enters  into  the  play  of  human  purpose  as  a 


RELATIONS 


145 


motive ;  and  beyond  this  no  further  relation  between 
the  outer  fact  and  the  inner  unity  appears  to  be  re¬ 
quired.  It  is  enough  to  recognize  that  the  world  is 
such  that,  for  the  life  of  mind,  things  may  become 
causes  by  being  translated  into  ideal  terms  of  knowl¬ 
edge,  and  brought  into  contact  with  a  developing 
desire  or  purpose;  the  sole  factors  involved  are  an 
inner — and  existential — experience  of  active  pur¬ 
pose,  external  reals  each  exactly  what  it  is,  and  the 
possibility  of  knowing  these  reals  on  the  terms  set 
forth  in  a  preceding  section.  Meanwhile  for  the 
physical  processes  themselves,  out  of  connection 
with  human  motivation,  we  may  if  we  choose  fall 
back  on  the  orthodox  scientific  formula  which  dis¬ 
penses  with  active  agency  altogether,  unless,  once 
more,  we  reinterpret  metaphysically  the  material 
world  after  a  fashion  that  makes  attributable  to  it 
likewise  the  inner  experience  of  purposive  change. 

The  same  general  method  of  approach  may  next 
be  tried  in  connection  with  what  stands  usually  as 
another  very  fundamental  relation.  Since  we  can 
“know”  extension,  the  spatial  character  must  also, 
on  the  basis  of  the  present  theory,  enter  as  a  quality 
of  feeling  experience  itself.  And  accordingly  the 
natural  suggestion  will  be,  that  the  spatial  character 
which  we  perceive  is  the  projection  of  that  character 
of  “extensity”  which  there  are  grounds  for  holding 
to  be  a  property  of  certain  sensory  experiences. 

At  this  point,  however,  questions  are  bound  to 
arise  which  did  not  appear  in  the  same  form  in  the 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


146 

case  of  causality.  What  is  the  relation  of  this  spatial 
character  of  sensation  to  the  real  space  which  is  an 
object  of  knowledge?  Is  the  sensation  itself  in 
space?  How  are  we  to  describe  the  nature  of  space 
itself  on  its  objective  side?  Is  it  a  quality,  or  a  rela¬ 
tion,  or  is  it,  possibly,  something  different  from 
both  of  these,  and  a  unique  sort  of  entity? 

We  may  turn  to  this  last  alternative  as  a  starting 
point.  If  it  be  the  true  one,  and  if  space  is  to  be  con¬ 
ceived  as  a  container  or  envelope  in  which  things 
exist,  then,  it  will  be  noticed,  we  have  on  our  hands 
still  another  sort  of  being  analogous  to,  but  dis¬ 
tinguishable  from,  the  supposed  “subsistence”  of  re¬ 
lations.  Philosophy  has  found  this  a  difficult  concep¬ 
tion  to  defend,  though  to  common  sense  it  has 
usually  seemed  fairly  obvious;  is  there  any  sugges¬ 
tion  here  that  the  present  thesis  seems  to  offer? 

Let  us  suppose  that  color  sensation,  for  example, 
has,  as  it  appears  to  have,  a  coincident  quality  which 
we  may  call  extensity,  and  that  extensity,  like 
color,  is  instinctively  used  to  qualify  the  reality  with 
which  in  perception  we  find  ourselves  in  contact. 
We  see  things  originally,  then,  as  possessing  a  vague 
extensity  or  spread-outness.  This  character  I  do  not 
see  how  we  can  easily  avoid  calling  in  the  first  in¬ 
stance  a  quality,  rather  than  a  relation;  it  is  some¬ 
thing  which  seems  actually  to  be  in  the  things.  But 
it  is  not  difficult  to  conjecture  how  the  notion  of 
space  as  a  container — which  again  is  commonly 
thought  of  as  quasi-substantial  rather  than  as  rela- 


RELATIONS 


H7 


tional — might  come  from  this  original  form  of  ex¬ 
perience.  Color  attaches  only  to  this  or  that  piece  of 
reality  in  particular,  because  color  is  not  uniform, 
but  differs  qualitatively.  But  extensities  do  not  so 
differ.  Moreover  they  are  perceptually  continuous;  it 
is  not  extensity  which  marks  one  object  off  from  an¬ 
other,  but  the  differentiating  qualities  of  color  or  tan¬ 
gibility  in  which  special  limits  of  extensity  have 
their  source.  Accordingly  while,  when  we  are  actually 
limiting  our  attention  to  a  single  object,  extension 
still  seems  to  be  a  part  of  it,  a  wider  view  will  tend 
to  separate  it  from  an  exclusive  connection  with 
particulars,  and  attach  it  to  the  world  at  large;  and 
it  thus  comes  to  be  regarded  as  a  medium  for  things 
rather  than  as  belonging  to  the  things  themselves. 
Since  the  spatial  continuity  goes  beyond  all  in¬ 
dividual  objects  and  includes  them,  it  is  natural  that 
these  objects  should  be  regarded  as  in  a  space  which 
is  detachable  from  them  in  their  particularity. 

And  this  supplies  a  reason  for  the  apparent  dif¬ 
ference  between  sensations  and  percepts  in  their  rela¬ 
tion  to  space.  The  former  I  think  we  must  say  are 
“spatial”;  but  we  certainly  hesitate  to  speak  of  them 
as  “in  space.”  And  this  is  a  natural  consequence  of 
the  dissimilarity  of  the  two  situations  cognitively. 
When,  at  a  very  late  date,  we  learn  to  recognize  the 
“psychological”  fact  of  sensation,  it  is  only  through 
a  process  of  isolating  the  sensation  as  a  separate  bit 
of  feeling — a  process  freed  from  direct  subservience 
to  those  organic  ends  under  whose  influence  is  built 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


148 

up  a  connected  world  of  objects;  and  here  accord¬ 
ingly  extensity  will  find  no  place  except  inside  the 
sensation  as  its  quality.  Before  space  can  belong  to 
the  “world,”  we  must  have  such  a  world  inclusive  of 
lesser  realities;  and  this  is  only  given  in  perception, 
not  in  introspective  analysis.  The  sensation  there¬ 
fore,  since  it  does  not  belong  as  such  to  the  inclusive 
whole  of  the  perceptual  field,  will  not  be  “in  space.” 

Meanwhile  we  mav  note  once  more  that  even  in  the 

* 

case  of  percepts  we  have  only  to  change  our  point  of 
view  to  bring  space  back  as  a  quality  of  objects.  It 
is  equally  natural  to  say  that  an  object  is  in  space, 
and  that  it  has  a  spatial  character  or  extensity;  it  de¬ 
pends  upon  whether  we  are  thinking  of  it  alone  or 
in  a  context. 

If  the  account  just  given  of  the  notion  of  an  all- 
encompassing,  featureless,  and  non-existent  space  be 
regarded  as  the  true  one,  the  justification  of  this  no¬ 
tion  will  appear  to  be  in  so  far  doubtful.  Space 
ought  not  to  be  expected  to  show  properties 
markedly  different  from  the  extensity  out  of  which 
it  is  built.  But  in  its  most  verifiable  form,  at  least, 
extensity  belongs  to  existents,  since  within  experi¬ 
ence  it  is  always,  like  color,  a  character  of  concrete 
feelings.  So  also  it  is  naturally  regarded  as  a  form 
of  existence  in  so  far  as  it  is  attributed  to  particular 
objects.  And  its  visual  continuity  does  not  really 
contradict  this,  since  even  the  seeing  of  extensity 
between  things  must  have  its  existential  basis.  In 
terms  merely  of  the  concrete  visual  experience, 


RELATIONS 


149 


therefore,  there  appears  no  necessary  reason  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  space  remains  in  the  absence  of  existences 
that  possess  extensity,  especially  since  there  is  no 
compelling  ground  so  far  for  holding  that  the  ideal 
mark  or  essence  which  we  call  extensity  must  needs 
be  a  real  replica  of  anything  outside  the  mind  at  all. 

The  more  solid  reasons  that  can  be  used  to  justify 
the  notion  of  a  universal  space  are  chiefly  two  in 
number.  One  has  to  do  with  the  supposed  need  for 
regarding  space  as  infinite  or  endless;  and  a  con¬ 
sideration  of  this  will  have  to  be  postponed  a  little. 
But  also  in  connection  with  a  second  main  psycho¬ 
logical  source  of  the  spatial  experience,  which  has 
not  yet  been  referred  to,  a  plausible  turn  can  be 
given  to  the  claim  that  space  is  an  actual  continuum 
distinguishable  from  the  things  that  occupy  it.  I  do 
not  profess  to  know  just  how  a  spatial  world  would 
feel  if  it  were  lacking  in  the  visual  quality  which  it 
possesses  for  men  who  see.  I  cannot  readily  conceive 
of  it  as  having  that  non-temporal  spread-outness 
which  is  its  distinctive  visual  character.  But  it  would 
still  possess  a  general  character  such  as  would  lend 
itself  to  the  notion  of  an  all-container.  This  charac¬ 
ter  may  be  described  as  the  possibility  of  movement. 
So  long  as  our  knowledge  is  supposed  to  be  objective 
and  realistic  at  all,  the  continuity  of  space  must  be 
objectively  grounded  at  least  in  this  sense,  that  it 
represents  a  real  opportunity  of  continuous  motion; 
and  the  simplest  way  of  conceiving  this  might  be  in 
terms  of  the  traditional  idea  of  space. 


150 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


But  on  examination  this  conclusion  would  again 
seem  not  to  follow;  there  is  after  all  no  real  require¬ 
ment  here  that  space  as  a  whole  should  have  a  quasi- 
existential  being.  We  doubtless  under  the  influence 
of  our  prepossessions  will  be  disposed  to  translate 
a  possibility  of  movement  into  “room  to  move  in.” 
But  the  bare  experience  of  motion  does  not  involve 
this.  Apart  from  a  possible  “feeling”  of  movement 
which  is  certainly  quite  different  from  “space,”  it 
is  difficult  to  detect  here  anything  present  that  is 
not  reducible  to  a  succession  of  experiences  more  or 
less  differently  qualified;  and  the  possibility  of  suf¬ 
fering  such  a  change  of  quality  has  no  evident  con¬ 
nection  with  the  need  for  postulating  an  encom¬ 
passing  entity  called  space. 

On  the  terms  so  far  canvassed,  therefore,  it  ap¬ 
pears  not  only  that  the  notion  of  an  independent 
space  is  of  doubtful  validity,  but  also  that  exten¬ 
sity,  the  basis  of  space,  is  itself  not  a  relation,  but  a 
quality.  Visually  the  space  between  two  objects  is 
not  primarily  their  relation,  but  another  stretch  of 
spatial  extension.  If  therefore  we  speak  of  spatial 
relations,  as  of  course  we  may  and  do,  it  would  seem 
that  we  must  refer,  not  to  space  itself,  but  to  rela¬ 
tions  that  have  space  as  their  source  or  funda- 
mentum.  Any  quality  may  thus  give  rise  to  relations 
which  are  dependent  on  it;  thus  colors  are  related  in 
terms  of  their  relative  likenesses  and  intensities.  But 
spatial  relations  are  of  particular  importance  in 
human  life,  because  of  their  exact  quantitative  char- 


RELATIONS 


151 

acter.  This  seems  a  sufficient  reason  for  the  preva¬ 
lence  of  a  relational  theory  of  space;  it  is  mainly  in 
quantitative  terms  that  space  is  a  useful  concept,  for 
the  scientist  or  the  practical  man. 

But  while  such  a  theory  may  be  justified  for  cer¬ 
tain  purposes,  it  ought  not  to  be  interpreted  as  mean¬ 
ing  that  space  is  nothing  hut  relations,  unless  we  are 
prepared  arbitrarily  to  ignore  altogether  that  crude 
quality  of  extensity  which  the  concept  certainly  in¬ 
volves.  And  it  is  relevant  to  notice,  further,  that 
these  same  quantitative  relations  are  separable  from 
spatial  conditions,  which  is  another  reason  for  hold¬ 
ing  that  they  apply  to  or  grow  out  of  extension, 
rather  than  constitute  it.  We  accordingly  are  jus¬ 
tified  for  our  special  problem  in  turning  here  from 
the  spatial  field,  to  the  more  general  fact  of  quan¬ 
tity  or  number,  as  that  which  supplies  the  major 
part  at  least  of  those  properties  that  have  led  men 
to  regard  space  as  a  relation.  Here  without  any 
doubt  we  are  dealing  with  relationships;  and  the 
question  is  to  what  extent,  if  any,  they  modify  the 
conclusions  previously  reached. 

I  shall  make  no  pretensions  here  to  examine  the 
extraordinarily  subtle  new  philosophies  of  mathe¬ 
matics — a  task  for  which  I  have  neither  the  space 
nor  the  ability.  It  may  be  that  these  have  revolu¬ 
tionary  metaphysical  consequences  which  I  am  not 
able  to  appreciate.  But  after  all  they  supposedly 
must  rest  in  the  end  upon  relatively  plain  and  em¬ 
pirical  insights,  if  they  are  to  have  more  than  a 


152 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


merely  technical  value  for  the  mathematician’s  pro¬ 
fessional  problems.  Our  more  familiar  judgments 
in  the  matter  cannot  be  safely  disregarded  there¬ 
fore;  and  these  seemingly  can  be  expressed  in  terms 
of  relations  not  essentially  different  in  kind  from 
those  already  considered.  Thus  it  would  seem  pretty 
close  to  our  ordinary  notions  if  we  were  to  say  that 
the  reality  of  quantitative  relations  turns  on  the 
perception  of  equalities  or  inequalities  involved  in 
an  indefinite  possibility  of  measurement  or  count¬ 
ing.  I  do  not  mean  of  course  that  number  is  itself 
reducible  to  the  psychological  act  of  counting, 
though  in  its  abstracter  form  its  material  would 
seem  to  be  supplied  directly  by  such  acts.  I  see 
however  no  decisive  reason  against  supposing  that 
the  essence  of  number  itself  may  not  be  reducible 
to  a  complex  system  of  equalities  of  which  the 
act  of  counting  is  the  condition;  and  equality  is 
evidently  the  same  general  type  of  relation  as  the 
relation  of  difference.  Not  quite  so  simple  is  the  re¬ 
lationship  of  serial  “order.”  But  at  least  there  seems 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  “nextness,”  and  “be¬ 
tween,”  and  whatever  further  elements  the  concep¬ 
tion  may  involve,  violate  the  analogy  of  other  sim¬ 
ple  relations  by  refusing  to  be  reduced  in  the  end  to 
distinctive  “feelings”  that  give  them  their  place  in 
experience,  and  so  in  knowledge. 

Meanwhile  the  very  tentative  and  imperfect  char¬ 
acter  of  the  above  account  is  of  the  less  importance, 
in  that,  for  what  is  the  most  persuasive  evidence  for 


RELATIONS 


153 


a  “subsistent”  world,  we  have  to  turn  to  a  further 
consideration,  which  has  so  far  been  left  in  the  back¬ 
ground — a  consideration  that  applies  to  all  rela¬ 
tions  alike,  but  that  becomes  particularly  insistent 
in  the  case  of  number.  This  is  the  fact  that  in  some 
sense  relations  plainly  range  far  beyond  the  bounda¬ 
ries  of  any  world  that  we  can  think  of  as  now  exist¬ 
ing;  and  what  can  this  mean  except  that  they  are 
to  be  conceived  as  having  “being”  apart  from  what 
exists?  Accordingly  the  present  thesis  demands,  as 
its  final  and  most  difficult  problem,  that  we  have 
something  to  say  about  relational  connections  in 
so  far  as  they  are  possible  only,  and  not  actual. 
What  is  the  nature  of  that  infinite  host  of  relation¬ 
ships  of  all  possible  sorts  which  no  one  ever  per¬ 
ceives,  though  they  might  be  perceived  under  ap¬ 
propriate  conditions? 

Before  turning  to  this  explicitly,  there  is  a  related 
question  to  which  it  is  easier  first  to  give  an  answer — 
the  question  of  significance.  The  most  general  and 
colorless  account  of  these  truths  of  relationship 
which  no  one  yet  has  thought,  is  to  this  effect,  that 
the  world  is  one  in  which  there  exist  possibilities 
not  yet  realized.  That  such  possibilities  exist  need 
not  in  its  practical  interpretation  imply  that  they 
are  somehow  now  existent,  in  an  inclusive  and  fully 
developed  consciousness,  or  as  a  timeless  world  of 
being;  it  means  precisely  that  the  world  is  yet  un¬ 
finished,  and  that  existence  is  capable  of  receiving 
additions.  Possibilities,  alike  in  terms  of  what  can 


154 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


be  done  and  of  what  is  capable  of  being  thought  of 
as  a  “truth,”  are  as  a  human  concept  absolutely 
limited  to  begin  with  by  the  present  or  “existent” 
facts.  From  these  we  have  to  start.  They  furnish  the 
terms  for  relationships  to  hold  between,  without 
which  these  relations  would  be  simply  null;  and 
they  limit  of  course  the  possibilities  of  actual  change 
and  achievement.  But  along  with  its  acquaintance 
with  the  relations  that  hold  between  existents  up  to 
date,  psychical  or  physical,  and  that  are  discovered 
by  direct  resort  to  experience,  the  mind  is  capable 
of  abstracting  and  manipulating  the  data  of  ex¬ 
perience,  and  of  thinking  them  together  in  num¬ 
berless  new  ways,  which  represent  not  the  actual, 
but  the  imaginable.  For  its  data  it  again  is  limited 
to  existents;  but  through  the  power  of  imagina¬ 
tive  construction  it  can  transcend  the  actual,  and 
enter  the  realm  of  the  possible  or  conceivable. 
And  the  practical  significance  of  this  is,  that  in 
doing  so  it  opens  the  way  for  existence  itself  to 
change  or  grow.  It  does  not  simply  offer  possi¬ 
bilities  in  the  way  of  novelties  of  thought;  these 
can  be  used  to  extend  the  range  of  existence  itself, 
and  to  guide  us,  if  held  in  check  by  a  proper  sense 
both  of  the  “real”  and  the  “desirable,”  in  bringing 
about  actual  alterations  in  the  world,  such  as  again 
lead  to  fresh  truths. 

And  now  this  constitutes,  I  am  disposed  to  hold, 
the  final  truth  of  the  matter  as  well ;  the  possibility 
of  being  discovered  in  the  process  of  growing  ex- 


RELATIONS 


155 


perience  is  all  the  status  that  the  relations  in  ques¬ 
tion  possess.  If,  after  a  relation  has  been  discovered, 
some  being  were  to  be  found  attaching  to  it  which 
is  incapable  of  being  reduced  to  existential  terms, 
this  position  would  indeed  be  impossible  to  main¬ 
tain.  But  I  have  attempted  to  suggest  that  such  may 
not  be  the  case.  The  relation  of  difference  perceived 
between  two  objects  is  not  a  preexisting — or  pre¬ 
subsisting — entity.  It  is  nothing  hut  the  possibility 
of  the  appearance  of  a  feeling  of  difference  under 
appropriate  circumstances,  or  the  fact  that  it  will 
appear.  For  relations  actually  to  be  at  all,  there  is 
needed  the  interposition  of  a  perceiving  mind,  which 
therefore  in  a  real  sense  actually  creates  them; 
though  they  still  remain  objective  in  the  sense  that 
the  mind  cannot  create  at  will  and  out  of  nothing, 
and  what  relations  it  will  add  to  the  real  universe 
is  conditioned  by  the  essences  which  in  this  universe 
are  already  found  embodied.  The  sole  reality  is  thus 
the  existing  world,  plus  the  unlimited  possibility  of 
growth;  and  this  last  I  take  to  be  an  ultimate  con¬ 
cept  reducible  to  nothing  other  than  itself. 

We  have,  accordingly,  no  need  to  postulate  an 
actual  infinity  of  number,  for  example,  existent  or 
subsistent.  The  infinity  of  number  stands  simply  for 
the  indefinite  possibility  of  counting.  Beings  who 
are  capable  of  counting  might  disappear,  in  which 
case  infinity  would  be  meaningless.  But  abstractly 
there  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  act  from  being  car¬ 
ried  as  far  as  we  please,  since  in  the  mere  concept  of 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


156 

activity  as  such  no  conditions  are  involved,  in  the 
shape  of  a  subject-matter,  to  check  or  limit  it.  Simi¬ 
larly  in  the  case  of  division.  We  might  very  con¬ 
ceivably  reach  a  physical  limit  to  the  possibility  of 
subdivision.  But  ideally  the  process  of  division  can 
go  on  forever,  since  a  definition  of  division  cannot 
consistently  find  a  place  for  its  own  negation.  In 
both  cases,  a  thing  is  “true’5  of  any  stage  in  the  proc¬ 
ess  which  we  should  actually  find  there  if  we  arrived 
at  that  stage.  But  this  again  does  not  mean  that  it 
possesses  a  mystical  sort  of  being  prior  to  its  dis¬ 
covery;  it  is  merely  that  actual  rules  of  operation 
may  be  so  defined  that,  if  carried  out,  the  resulting 
facts  would  also  be  found  to  be  of  a  specific  sort 
through  their  dependence  on  the  given  data.  And 
along  with  this,  and  with  the  same  status,  may  also 
be  certain  logical  consequences  of  the  nature  of  the 
rules  themselves,  in  terms  of  their  refusal  to  accept 
a  limit.  Meanwhile,  in  general,  any  difference  there 
may  seem  to  be  between  mathematics  and,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  history,  is  simply  due,  apart  from  the  greater 
facilities  for  short-cut  methods,  to  the  fact  that  in 
the  former  case  the  conditions  are  arbitrarily  de¬ 
fined  and  limited  in  abstract  or  conceptual  terms, 
and  so  are  freed  from  the  contingency  that  attends 
the  process  of  development  in  the  concrete  world. 

In  the  notion  of  infinite  space — to  return  briefly 
to  an  earlier  point — there  is  an  additional  complica¬ 
tion.  But  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  fail  to  keep 
separate  the  quality  of  extensity,  and  the  logical 


RELATIONS 


157 

property  of  quantitative  relationship;  neither  of 
them  when  taken  by  itself  gives  rise  to  insuperable 
difficulties  of  thought.  Extensity  as  a  concrete 
quality  is  not  infinite.  It  belongs  to  whatever  exist¬ 
ent  it  happens  to  belong  to,  and  in  the  absence  of 
existents  it  disappears  entirely.  It  is  the  ideal  process 
of  imagination  which  is  responsible  for  the  thought 
of  space  as  interminable.  But  here,  since  actual  space 
has  no  content  apart  from  existence,  which  may  so 
far  as  we  know  be  limited,  we  are  merely  concerned 
with  the  abstract  notion  of  addition;  and  our  in¬ 
ability  therefore  to  think  space  as  limited  means, 
again,  only  that  the  process  of  addition  is  not 
limited  by  anything  in  its  own  nature. 

What  has  been  said  of  space  will  apply  in  prin¬ 
ciple  to  time  as  well,  where  the  experienced  fact  is 
the  quality  of  duration  which  belongs  to  any  psycho¬ 
logical  process,  and  which,  like  extensity,  is  used  to 
interpret  the  object  of  knowledge.  Time  also,  there¬ 
fore,  does  not  exist  as  an  envelope  of  events;  it 
attaches  to  such  things  as  it  actually  is  found  be¬ 
longing  to.  Through  its  character  as  continuous, 
however,  it  readily  lends  itself,  like  space,  to  the 
notion  of  an  all-container.  And  accordingly  we  come 
to  think  of  different  and  experientially  discontinu¬ 
ous  realities  as  all  having  their  place  in  a  common 
flow  of  time;  whereas  the  more  accurate  statement 
would  seem  to  be  that  realities  beyond  my  tem¬ 
porally  unified  experience,  while  they  may  them¬ 
selves  also  possess  the  temporal  character,  form 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH4? 


158 

part  of  a  single  time  process  only  in  the  sense  that 
they  come  into  teleological  relationships  with  my 
life  at  some  particular  temporal  point  within  it 
through  being  known,  and  thus  become  amenable  to 
a  unified  conceptual  treatment  in  terms  of  the  quan¬ 
titative  relationships  which  duration,  like  extensity, 
generates.  Of  course,  since  these  relationships  are  ob¬ 
jectively  grounded,  it  is  still  true  that  the  conception 
of  an  inclusive  time  process  may  be  phenomenally 
valid.  But  it  is  less  adequate  nevertheless  to  the 
ultimate  nature  of  things  than  the  conception  of  an 
intercausal  or  purposive  unity  of  action,  mediated 
through  cognition,  on  the  part  of  existences  which 
individually  have  the  form  of  duration. 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL 
IMPLICATIONS 


THE  present  essay  professes  to  be  concerned 
primarily  with  knowledge,  and  its  analysis  as 
an  aspect  of  experience.  There  are  some  advantages 
in  thus  limiting  the  problem.  Knowledge  clearly 
does  as  an  experience  have  certain  definable  charac¬ 
ters;  and  while  it  is  true  that  most  questions  in 
philosophy  cannot  be  finally  settled  without  refer¬ 
ence  to  our  total  view  of  things,  it  also  seems  ap¬ 
parent  that  no  subordinate  aspect  can  safely,  beyond 
a  certain  point,  be  falsified  in  the  interests  of  har¬ 
mony  with  a  speculative  system.  I  venture  to  think 
that  this  is  what  has  happened  much  too  frequently 
in  theories  of  knowledge.  These,  under  the  name  of 
knowledge,  offer  for  our  acceptance  something  often 
very  hard  to  recognize;  and  the  reason  for  setting 
aside  a  more  natural  description  is  precisely  the 
difficulties  it  is  supposed  to  occasion  for  an  ultimate 
metaphysical  theory.  If  we  are  at  liberty  thus  to 
alter  apparent  facts  at  will  when  they  do  not  suit 
our  speculative  purposes,  the  way  is  open  to  almost 
anything  in  philosophy;  it  is  safer  to  let  the  facts 
speak  for  themselves,  without  considering  at  first  too 
nicely  their  bearing  on  other  and  remoter  problems. 
Nevertheless  I  realize  that  it  will  be  an  obstacle  to 
the  acceptance  of  a  theory  in  case  it  is  not  possible 


i6o 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


to  see,  vaguely  at  any  rate,  the  direction  in  which 
its  implications  point.  And  accordingly,  as  a  work 
of  supererogation,  I  shall  in  conclusion  indicate 
what  seems  to  me  the  general  view  of  reality  which 
an  account  of  knowledge  such  as  I  have  been  defend¬ 
ing  suggests.  But  before  coming  to  this,  it  may  be 
well  to  make  two  explanatory  digressions. 

The  first  of  these  has  to  do  with  the  sense  in  which 
I  conceive  that  epistemology  may  be  used  as  a  source 
for  ontological  conclusions.  This  whole  possibility 
has  recently  been  subjected  to  a  vigorous  attack 
by  the  American  neo-realists;  and  with  much  of  the 
spirit  of  this  attack,  if  I  understand  it  rightly,  I 
think  I  should  agree.  If,  when  we  talk  of  the  logical 
priority  of  epistemology,  we  intend  to  make  the 
claim  that  before  we  have  any  possibility  of  know¬ 
ing  we  must  know  that  we  know,  and  use  this  some¬ 
how  as  a  premise  from  which  the  knowledge  is  to 
be  deduced,  the  claim  I  should  say  is  manifestly 
absurd.  We  begin  by  knowing;  and  if  we  had  to 
justify  knowledge  before  we  could  know,  we  should 
never  get  a  start. 

But  it  seems  to  me  quite  possible  along  with  this 
to  hold  that,  after  knowing  has  in  turn  become  an 
object  of  investigation  and  its  conditions  have  been 
discovered,  this  new  and  empirical  knowledge  may 
conceivably  lead  us  to  important  conclusions  about 
the  real  world  itself,  and  so  justify  to  an  extent  the 
historical  place  that  epistemology  has  had.  I  am  led 
to  think  this,  however,  because  I  believe  that  the 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  161 


known  world  is  not,  primarily,  a  neutral  realm  of 
propositions  intuitively  perceived  to  be  true;  these 
propositions  are  propositions  about  a  reality  not  im¬ 
mediately  embedded  in  the  knowledge  process.  The 
knowledge  with  which  we  start  as  a  presupposition 
is  in  the  form  of  belief ,  such  as  implies  a  certain 
separation  between  the  things  affirmed  and  the  be¬ 
lieving  act;  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  a  possibility 
always  exists  that  belief  may  be  modified  when  we 
come  to  note  the  conditions  under  which  alone  we 
find  knowledge  taking  place.  Not  of  course  that  we 
ought  to  waive  belief  until  we  have  deduced  or 
justified  its  possibility.  But  if  knowledge  means  the 
holding  of  opinions  about  a  world  in  some  real  sense 
transcending  the  knower  and  his  knowing  experi¬ 
ence,  the  fact  that  empirically  we  do — not  that  we 
must — approach  reality  only  by  a  certain  discover¬ 
able  method,  does  very  strongly  suggest  the  ad¬ 
visability  of  holding  off  from  a  final  interpretation 
until  this  method  of  approach  has  been  carefully 
examined.  Such  an  examination  will  reveal,  at  least, 
that  our  knowledge  of  the  outer  world  is  probable 
knowledge  only,  and  therefore  subject  to  doubt  and 
possible  revision. 

This  last  introduces  the  second  point  of  digres¬ 
sion;  and  I  should  like  to  emphasize  it  once  more  in 
view  especially  of  what  I  am  going  on  to  say.  “Dual¬ 
ism”  does  not  lend  itself  to  that  ideal  of  logical  or 
demonstrative  certainty  at  which  philosophy  has  so 
frequently  aimed.  I  have  already  considered  the 


162 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH*? 


nature  and  degree  of  assurance  which  is  possible  in 
human  belief,  and  to  me  this  seems  sufficient  for  all 
our  genuine  needs.  But  it  is  not  theoretical  certainty; 
unquestionably  it  leaves  the  way  open  to  sceptical 
doubt.  There  are  various  ways  in  which  rival  phi¬ 
losophies  may  seek  to  avoid  such  an  admission.  But 
a  dualism  which  recognizes  the  distinction  between 
knowledge  as  a  process  in  the  inner  life  of  an  in¬ 
dividual,  and  reality  as  mediately  known,  must 
needs  admit  that  no  ideas  of  fallible  human  beings 
can  possibly  avoid  the  chance  of  being  mistaken. 

And  to  this  I  am  compelled  in  candor  to  add  a 
more  personal  confession.  I  find  myself  growing 
more  and  more  alive  to  the  difficulty  of  reaching 
conclusions  about  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality 
which  stand  much  chance  on  purely  reasoned 
grounds  of  carrying  very  strong  conviction  to  other 
minds.  When  one  considers  all  the  queer  obsessions 
and  blind  spots  and  ineffectualities  of  the  human  in¬ 
tellect  even  at  its  best — and  the  persuasion  that 
such  things  are  not  important  for  the  philosopher  is 
one  conspicuous  example  of  their  working — it  seems 
a  bit  audacious  to  make  very  insistent  claims  to  the 
possession  of  assured  knowledge  in  a  sphere  where 
our  beliefs  are  only  in  a  vague  way  open  to  testing. 
What  a  given  man  will  accept  here  will  almost 
certainly  be  determined  in  considerable  part  by  con¬ 
siderations  other  than  strictly  necessary  ones.  A  par¬ 
ticular  construction  will  appeal  to  his  imaginative 
sense  of  beauty,  to  his  religious  or  his  social  per- 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  163 

suasions  of  significance,  perhaps  to  no  more  than 
his  possessive  instincts  and  a  pride  in  his  own  per¬ 
sonal  originality  as  a  thinker;  and  if  his  road  is  not 
barred  by  too  great  difficulties  and  inconsistencies, 
he  will  find  the  evidence  enough  for  his  own  private 
conviction.  But  it  ought  not  to  be  hard  for  him  to 
understand  how  to  others  it  may  make  a  different 
appeal.  Often  a  very  slight  shift  of  emphasis  will  be 
found  to  alter  substantially  a  philosophy’s  persua¬ 
siveness.  I  think  it  therefore  not  unlikely  that  the 
caution  which  the  world  has  always  shown  in  the 
presence  of  metaphysical  conclusions,  and  which  in¬ 
deed  each  philosopher  has  practiced  toward  the  con¬ 
clusions  of  the  rest,  will  come  increasingly,  with  the 
growth  of  self-knowledge,  to  be  felt  by  thinkers 
toward  their  own  systems  also,  in  so  far  as  these  go 
beyond  a  verifiable  analysis  of  experienced  facts  and 
meanings. 

With  this  preamble,  I  may  proceed  to  say  a  few 
words  about  what  on  the  whole  appear  to  me  the 
most  natural  implications  of  the  dualism  which  I 
have  been  defending,  in  terms  of  a  theory  of  reality. 
Most  of  these  go  back  to  one  point  in  particular.  The 
theory  has  presupposed  that  every  character  which 
we  can  assign  to  the  real  world  must  first  be  found 
within  experience — as  a  character,  that  is,  of  feel¬ 
ing  stuff.  We  know  accordingly  that  existence  in 
this  particular  form  is  possible  for  them;  and  con¬ 
sequently,  if  nothing  further  needed  to  be  con¬ 
sidered,  the  easiest  hypothesis  would  be  that,  in  so 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ? 


164 

far  as  such  characters  can  justify  their  claim  to  be¬ 
long  to  the  object  known,  they  will  have  there  too 
the  same  sort  of  embodiment  we  can  verify  within 
experience,  and  that  the  world  of  nature  is  there¬ 
fore  in  its  substance  akin  to  the  world  of  feeling. 

There  appears  to  be  no  logical  necessity  for  this 
conclusion.  I  feel  indeed  some  hesitation  in  suppos¬ 
ing  that  an  identical  quality  may  characterize  two 
entirely  different  sorts  of  stuff,  feeling  on  the  one 
hand,  and  something  we  call  matter  on  the  other. 
But  I  really  cannot  see  that  this  hesitation  is  a  suffi¬ 
cient  reason  for  denying  that  the  possibility  exists. 
And  it  is  undoubtedly  so  that  the  belief  in  matter 
is  a  belief  which  in  the  course  of  nature  we  actually 
find  ourselves  entertaining  when  we  start  out  to 
philosophize.  It  therefore  has  a  presumption  in  its 
favor,  on  the  principles  I  have  been  professing;  the 
suggestion  on  the  other  hand  that  the  true  reality  of 
the  outer  world  is  one  of  mind  or  spirit,  comes  with 
a  certain  shock  of  paradox. 

But  as  a  partial  offset  to  this,  it  also  should  be 
noticed  that  from  another  and  familiar  standpoint 
the  claim  is  not  so  strange  in  appearance  after  all. 
I  refer  of  course  to  the  religious  consciousness.  This 
is  a  part  of  normal  human  experience,  as  truly  as 
are  the  beliefs  of  common  sense;  and  it  therefore 
cannot  be  treated  as  cavalierly  as  we  perhaps  are 
justified  in  treating  the  merely  dialectical  conclu¬ 
sions  of  philosophy.  And  in  a  way  this  second  stand¬ 
point  has  even  a  certain  right  to  priority  here.  Our 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  165 

everyday  belief  in  matter  is  after  all  primarily  prac¬ 
tical  rather  than  theoretical  in  its  import.  It  is  not 
in  the  first  place  an  attempt  to  state  what  reality  is, 
but  a  descriptive  formula  for  the  natural  conditions 
which  the  life  process  has  to  presuppose.  The  other 
point  of  view,  on  the  contrary,  does  profess  to  be 
to  an  extent  an  account  of  the  true  nature  of  things. 
It  is  on  the  whole  the  distinct  tendency  of  religion,  in 
its  more  intimate  forms,  not  merely  to  believe  that 
a  being  akin  to  the  human  spirit  exists  behind  the 
realm  of  nature,  but  to  hold  that  the  natural  world 
itself,  instead  of  being  the  fully  real  and  ultimate 
fact  it  seems  to  be,  is,  in  comparison  with  the  deeper 
realities  of  the  spiritual  life,  a  more  or  less  unsub¬ 
stantial  and  phenomenal  show.  It  is  true  that  reli¬ 
gion  seldom  goes  so  far  as  to  attempt  a  detailed  re¬ 
construction  of  our  natural  belief;  and  probably  it 
could  not  do  this  without  compromising  to  an  extent 
its  own  persuasiveness.  It  tends  to  supplant  other 
attitudes  rather  than  to  make  itself  inclusive  of 
them.  Nevertheless  the  fact  remains  that  the  notion 
of  the  relative  unreality  of  matter  is  one  not  un¬ 
familiar  to  certain  normal  human  moods. 

There  is  of  course  a  second  alternative  to  the  one 
I  am  considering,  which  in  the  abstract  would  be 
equally  consistent  with  the  theory  of  essences.  It 
might  be  that  the  characters  present  in  the  conscious 
life  which  the  mind  refers  to  reality  are  only,  as 
Spencer  would  say,  “symbolic,”  and  that  they  do 
not  as  such  exist  at  all  in  the  outer  world.  And  the 


1 66 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


fact  that  modern  science  in  its  metaphysical  moods 
has  so  frequently  found  itself  pointed  in  this  direc¬ 
tion,  deserves  consideration.  I  have  nothing  to  add 
here  to  what  I  have  already  said  about  the  justifica¬ 
tion  of  a  more  positive  form  of  belief.  The  abstract 
possibility  of  agnosticism  does  indeed  remain,  and 
will  probably  never  cease  to  offer  an  intellectual 
attraction  to  the  man  whose  natural  faith  is  small. 
But  on  the  other  hand  no  insuperable  difficulties 
seem  to  lie  in  the  way  of  a  measure  at  least  of  gnos¬ 
ticism;  and  consequently  there  is  no  good  reason  why 
those  in  whom  the  tendency  to  believe  is  stronger — 
and  they  constitute  the  vast  majority  of  the  race — 
should  not  indulge  it  so  long  as  due  caution  is  shown. 
An  over-insistent  demand  for  a  sort  of  evidence 
which  human  experience  does  not  supply,  is  not  to 
be  taken  as  proof  of  a  judicious  mind.  Accordingly 
we  find  that  the  working  scientist  almost  univer¬ 
sally,  in  spite  of  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  theo¬ 
rists  to  play  tentatively  with  a  philosophical  scep¬ 
ticism,  in  practice  does  not  hesitate  to  accept  so??ie 
cognitive  characters  of  the  world  as  real  and  ob¬ 
jective — relational  if  not  qualitative  ones.  And  at 
least  the  fact  that  scientific  results  pretty  nearly 
always  leave  us  with  a  universe  very  different  from 
that  in  which  the  common  man  believes,  is  a  reason 
for  declining  to  reject  too  hastily  any  thesis  because 
it  does  not  fully  square  with  our  first  interpreta¬ 
tion. 

I  conceive,  then,  that  the  hypothesis  to  which  the 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  167 

analysis  of  knowledge  points  is  one  which,  in  spite 
of  its  initial  strangeness  from  the  standpoint  of  prac¬ 
tical  beliefs,  has  some  claim  to  the  attention  of  the 
philosopher.  When  it  comes  to  setting  forth  however 
in  any  detail  the  form  of  such  a  theory,  I  am  afraid 
that  the  outcome  is  apt  to  seem  more  plausible  to 
one  who  starts  with  a  general  bias  in  its  favor,  than 
to  a  different  type  of  mind;  certainly  I  should  not 
expect  it  to  be  widely  accepted  purely  under  the 
compulsion  of  logical  argument.  I  propose  to  do  no 
more  here  than  suggest  a  few  of  its  very  general 
features,  as  these  seem  to  follow  most  naturally 
from  the  present  point  of  view. 

Both  religion  and  logical  analogy  coincide  in 
pointing  to  the  “self”  as  the  more  inclusive  concept 
which  the  attributing  of  essences  to  nature  will 
imply.  All  experience  for  us  takes  the  form  of  a 
personal  property;  it  is  a  unified  whole  of  feeling, 
which  in  some  interpretation  or  other  we  are  bound 
to  recognize  as  “ours.”  It  is  most  natural  therefore, 
if  we  have  started  out  by  using  the  connection  of 
cognitive  essences  with  feeling  experience  to  inter¬ 
pret  the  outer  reality  to  which  they  are  referred,  to 
accept  at  the  same  time  whatever  additional  char¬ 
acter  “experience”  may  be  found  to  bear,  and  to  re¬ 
gard  in  consequence  this  feeling  substance  as  con¬ 
stituting  the  life  of  a  personal  being  more  ultimate 
than  the  human  self,  and  co-extensive  with  the  unity 
of  the  world  of  nature.  The  efforts  of  philosophy 
to  say  precisely  what  we  mean  by  a  self,  and  to 


i68 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


free  the  concept  from  ambiguities,  have  indeed,  it 
must  be  granted,  been  less  successful  than  we  should 
like  to  see  them.  But  this  is  no  sufficient  reason  for 
declining  to  admit  its  reality.  We  are  perfectly  well 
assured  that  the  self  is  an  actual  fact  in  the  world, 
however  difficult  it  may  be  of  definition;  and  for 
any  significance  at  least  that  things  may  bear,  it  is 
an  absolutely  central  and  fundamental  sort  of  fact. 

Up  to  a  certain  point,  there  is  indeed  no  insuper¬ 
able  difficulty  in  giving  a  description  of  the  nature 
of  the  self.  As  an  experienced  fact,  it  is  a  unity  of 
a  fairly  definite  and  verifiable  sort,  characterized  by 
such  things  as  a  present  felt  unity  of  the  conscious 
field,  a  sense  of  intimate  connection  with  certain 
portions  of  the  past,  and,  in  particular,  a  range  of 
purposes  or  ends  which  anticipate  in  a  definable  way 
the  future.  And  empirical  philosophy  has  sometimes 
been  satisfied  to  stop  here,  as  if  the  problem  of  the 
self  had  thus  been  met.  To  this  however  the  objec¬ 
tion  is,  that  the  self  most  certainly  appears  to  be 
something  in  addition  to  the  actual  processes  that 
make  up  the  stream  of  conscious  experiencing.  We 
are  more  than  we  feel,  or  say,  or  do.  There  lie  poten¬ 
tialities  in  the  background  which  are  not  fully  real¬ 
ized  at  any  given  moment,  and  perhaps  may  never 
be  realized  completely;  and  these  to  all  appearance 
supply  the  source  from  which  in  some  sense  the 
realized  facts  of  experience  in  particular  spring.  It 
is  only  by  ignoring  these  more  fundamental  facts  in 
their  relation  to  the  hidden  springs  of  conduct,  that 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  169 

we  can  be  satisfied  to  define  the  self  solely  in  terms 
of  the  surface  phenomena  of  the  conscious  life. 

It  is  however  one  thing  to  recognize  that  some¬ 
thing  here  is  present  below  the  surface  of  conscious 
happenings,  and  another  to  give  a  rational  and  con¬ 
vincing  account  of  what  this  more  fundamental 
something  is.  I  do  not  myself  feel  able  to  supply 
such  an  account  in  any  form  that  will  escape  essen¬ 
tial  obscurities.  There  are  two  main  directions  in 
which  to  turn.  It  may  be  that  there  is  some  substan¬ 
tial  entity  underlying  the  phenomenal  life,  such  as 
common  sense  and — in  the  past — philosophy  have 
agreed  to  call  a  “soul.”  This  has  the  advantage  that 
it  seems  to  be  the  mind’s  natural  answer  to  the  prob¬ 
lem;  its  disadvantage  is  that  the  nature  of  such  a 
soul  substance,  and  its  connection  with  the  empirical 
self,  is  in  the  strictest  sense  unthinkable  and  un¬ 
imaginable. 

The  other  alternative  is  to  follow  the  lead  of  the 
scientific  experience,  when  this  is  reinterpreted,  of 
course,  in  terms  of  the  hypothesis  we  are  presuppos¬ 
ing.  There  is  an  empirical  basis  for  the  soul  life 
actually  given  us — the  bodily  organism  namely — 
which  does  account  in  detail,  up  to  a  point,  for 
many  of  its  peculiarities.  And  if  the  reality  of  the 
physical  world  be  the  life  of  God  himself,  then  we 
might  be  led  to  conjecture  that  the  reality  of  the 
deeper  self  may  lie  directly  in  the  depths  of  the 
divine.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  religion  would 


170 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


find  itself  sympathetic  with  such  a  view,  if,  again, 
we  do  not  press  too  far  for  a  detailed  statement. 

And  at  least  in  this  way  one  metaphysical  diffi¬ 
culty  is  eliminated;  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to  try  to 
think  the  reality  of  a  “substance”  whose  nature  is 
by  definition  unthinkable.  Back  of  our  own  life  is 
a  deeper-lying  consciousness  which  serves  as  its 
foundation;  but  the  reason  for  postulating  a  soul 
for  God  himself  has  disappeared.  Man  needs  a  soul 
only  because  empirically  the  unity  of  consciousness 
is  not  self-sufficient.  But  God,  so  religion  certainly 
would  maintain,  is  fully  conscious  of  all  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  his  life.  For  him  there  is  no  mysterious  and 
subconscious  background ;  and  accordingly  no  reason 
here  exists,  as  it  does  in  the  case  of  man,  for  refus¬ 
ing  to  define  the  nature  of  the  self  in  terms  of  a 
unified  conscious  experience,  whose  “existence”  is 
just  the  feeling  stuff  of  experience  itself.  For  it  is 
not  this  existence  in  the  form  of  feeling  which  seems 
to  call  for  a  further  substance  to  serve  as  its  founda¬ 
tion,  but  the  positive  reasons  we  have,  where  our 
own  feelings  are  concerned,  for  looking  further  for 
their  preconditions. 

It  remains  true  however  that  the  special  relation - 
ship  that  holds  between  God  and  the  human  life  is 
still  opaque,  since  in  the  nature  of  the  case  nothing 
in  our  experience  can  fully  cover  it.  We  should  be 
led  to  say  in  general  that  a  certain  province  of  re¬ 
ality  is  put  in  some  measure  under  the  control  of 
that  conscious  intelligence  and  will  in  which  for  its 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  171 

own  awareness  a  human  self  consists,  so  that  thereby 
it  achieves  the  possibility  not  only  of  coming  into 
contact  with  and  affecting  other  parts  of  the  world, 
but  of  developing  the  resources  that  have  been  en¬ 
trusted  to  it;  but  this  undoubtedly  leaves  many 
things  obscure.  But  so,  I  feel  very  certain,  does  any 
other  possible  account  of  the  matter  which  does  not 
get  rid  of  the  difficulty  artificially  by  the  popular 
philosophical  device  of  leaving  out  some  of  the 
factors  involved.  The  relation  of  the  physical  or¬ 
ganism  to  the  conscious  life  which  evidently  is  de¬ 
pendent  on  it,  and  which  to  all  appearance  is  con¬ 
cerned  in  its  own  physical  fortunes,  is  still  one  of 
the  unsettled  problems  of  philosophy. 

If  we  turn  from  the  self  as  a  human  concept  to 
its  use  for  the  interpretation  of  the  divine,  other 
difficulties  will  of  course  appear.  These  last  however 
do  not  seem  to  be  insuperable,  provided  we  have 
once  convinced  ourselves  that  the  self  concept  is  as 
such  not  unintelligible.  In  part  they  are  due  to  the 
imaginative  difficulty  of  grasping  a  reality  so  vast 
as  on  any  showing  God’s  life  must  be.  The  concep¬ 
tion  of  an  experience  comprehensive  enough  to  in¬ 
clude  the  multitudinous  facts  of  the  physical  world, 
is  bound  naturally  to  over-awe  our  human  attempts 
to  realize  it.  But  I  see  no  way  to  escape  the  convic¬ 
tion  that  the  world  is  on  any  interpretation  much 
too  big  not  to  baffle  the  concrete  imagination. 

Meanwhile  I  suspect  that  the  difficulty  is  in¬ 
creased  unnecessarily  by  our  tendency  to  choose  for 


172 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


the  understanding  of  God’s  life  a  type  of  experience 
which  is  not  best  fitted  for  the  purpose.  We  as  human 
beings  are  compelled  to  learn  progressively  and 
piecemeal  the  conditions  of  existence.  We  naturally 
therefore  think  of  experience  first  of  all  as  an  in¬ 
tellectual  turning  of  attention  in  this  or  that  par¬ 
ticular  direction;  and  on  such  terms  the  task  that  is 
laid  upon  God  may  well  seem  prohibitive.  But  if  we 
suppose  these  natural  conditions,  as  a  part  of  his 
own  nature,  to  be  open  to  him  directly  without  the 
need  for  first  discovering  them,  we  may  conceive  of 
the  facts  as  entering  into  his  experience  in  a  different 
and  more  unified  form.  Such  an  experience  is  pos¬ 
sible  even  to  the  human  self  in  proportion  to  the 
completeness  of  his  control  over  the  conditions  of  his 
activity — in  playing  a  game,  for  example,  in  which 
he  is  expert;  here  we  do  not  find  it  so  difficult  to  con¬ 
ceive  a  fairly  wide  complexity  of  content  present  in 
a  genuine  unity  of  appreciation.  Or  compare  again 
the  difference  between  the  piecemeal  and  serial  char¬ 
acter  involved  in  the  critical  judgment  of  a  work  of 
art,  and  the  wholeness  and  comprehensiveness  of  the 
aesthetic  experience  itself. 

A  second  source  of  difficulty  in  the  conception  of 
God  as  a  self  is  dialectical  rather  than  imaginative. 
Here  I  think  it  would  be  found  that  a  great  deal  of 
the  trouble  is  due  to  the  desire  to  apply  to  God  the 
traditional  attributes  of  infinity  or  of  absoluteness.  So 
long  as  one  subscribes  to  the  philosophical  prejudice 
against  taking  God  as  less  than  the  whole,  he  will 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  173 

undoubtedly  find  great  difficulty  in  regarding  him 
also  as  a  self,  though  I  do  not  say  that  the  difficulty 
is  insurmountable.  But  it  will  at  least  make  his  path 
smoother  if  he  is  willing  to  recognize  the  apparent 
implications  of  our  natural  view  of  knowledge  and 
its  object — that  the  world  of  nature  is  a  reality  dis¬ 
tinguishable,  and  in  a  real  degree  separable,  from 
the  inner  life  of  the  human  beings  who  know  it,  and 
that  it  has  a  unity  of  a  special  sort  into  which,  as 
the  unsuccessful  labor  of  science  and  philosophy  has 
shown,  it  is  not  easy  to  incorporate  directly,  in 
scientific  terms,  these  human  lives  as  a  portion  of  its 
component  stuff.  And  in  so  far  as  God  is  regarded 
as  the  interpretation  of  nature,  to  him  also  the  same 
judgment  will  apply. 

That  the  notion  of  a  finite  God,  in  this  technical 
sense,  is  also  not  lacking  in  difficulties  of  its  own,  is 
of  course  undeniable;  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  put 
the  conception  in  a  form  to  aggravate  them.  Thus 
the  first  objection  likely  to  appeal  to  the  religious 
consciousness  does  not  seem  inherent  in  the  notion. 
If  God  be  taken  as  existentially  limited  not  only  by 
other  and  human  selves,  but  by  a  further  and  more 
fundamental  background  of  brute  being  which  ham¬ 
pers  his  activity,  it  will  reasonably  be  urged  that 
this  tends  to  weaken  that  assured  faith  in  the  tri¬ 
umph  of  the  good  which  is  unquestionably  one  im¬ 
portant  motive  in  the  religious  life.  Factual  argu¬ 
ments  are  not  wanting  for  this  limitation;  but  there 
is  nothing  in  the  abstract  to  require  it.  And  if  we 


174 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


do  suppose  that  the  essential  conditions  of  existence 
are  identified  with  God’s  own  nature,  there  is  noth¬ 
ing  in  the  reality  of  other  and  dependent  selves  to 
jeopardize  the  outcome,  even  if  we  grant  to  such 
selves  a  measure  of  free  initiative,  and  the  power 
therefore  to  determine,  within  such  narrow  limits  as 
the  facts  of  experience  warrant,  the  future  course  of 
affairs.  It  is  perfectly  conceivable,  and  not  incon¬ 
sistent  with  our  practical  knowledge  about  the  rela¬ 
tion  between  man  and  nature,  that  the  fundamental 
lines  of  progress  should  be  determined  and  made 
certain  of  success,  while  yet  there  should  be  within 
this  general  scheme  a  wide  variety  of  alternative 
possibilities,  dependent  for  their  actualization  upon 
the  form  that  human  cooperation  takes,  but  all  alike 
issuing  in  a  result  that  approves  itself  to  our  sense 
of  values. 

In  the  light  of  this  general  conception  one  per¬ 
haps  can  meet  in  part  another  and  more  metaphysi¬ 
cal  difficulty.  If  we  placate  the  fear  lest  values  be 
impermanent,  I  think  it  may  be  regarded  as  the 
natural  demand  of  human  nature  that  the  future 
should  open  up  real  accessions  of  good,  and  that  a 
place  should  therefore  be  provided  for  novelty  and 
growth  in  the  ultimate  universe.  It  is  true  that 
heaven  has  mostly  been  conceived  in  terms  of  rest. 
But  in  such  a  doctrine  a  note  of  weariness  and  re¬ 
laxation  is  evident  which,  though  excusable  as  a  re¬ 
action  against  the  life  of  toil  which  men  now  are 
forced  to  undergo,  ought  plainly  not  to  be  allowed 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  175 

to  settle  our  final  religious  convictions;  and  I  think 
that  it  does  not  in  fact  represent  the  best  religious 
insight.  As  we  know  the  good  in  human  terms,  it  is 
bound  up  everywhere  with  activity  and  change ;  and 
it  is  difficult,  and  probably  impossible,  to  conceive 
of  it  concretely  when  change  has  been  eliminated. 
While  therefore  idealists  have  usually  insisted  that 
religion  aims  at  the  all-complete  and  the  non-tem¬ 
poral,  I  think  it  likely  that  they  are  in  reality  at¬ 
tributing  to  the  religious  mind  needs  that  are  pri¬ 
marily  speculative  or  metaphysical. 

That  the  mind  may  feel  a  certain  natural  reluc¬ 
tance  when  asked  to  think  the  appearance  in  the  uni¬ 
verse  of  something  not  there  before,  I  am  not  dis¬ 
posed  to  deny.  And  if  the  conception  of  an  eternal 
and  all-inclusive  reality  were  itself  free  from  diffi¬ 
culties,  it  might  have  a  speculative  advantage — 
which  would  however,  I  still  think,  be  a  practical 
disadvantage — over  the  competing  notion  of  a  grow¬ 
ing  world.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  effort  by  phi¬ 
losophy  to  rationalize  the  notion  of  the  non-tem¬ 
poral  has  so  far  been  a  total  failure.  Meanwhile  I 
think  that  the  most  serious  drawback  to  the  alter¬ 
native  doctrine  is  in  connection,  not  with  novelty 
as  such,  but  with  novelty  in  kind  or  quality.  I  have 
myself  to  confess  to  a  very  strong  intellectual  re¬ 
pugnance  to  the  idea  of  a  world  in  which  realities 
of  an  entirely  new  sort  suddenly  emerge,  which  in 
no  sense  were  there  before;  though  even  here  I  see 
no  strict  impossibility  in  the  notion,  and  am  not 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


176 

certain  therefore  that  I  may  not  be  forcing  a  preju¬ 
dice  of  mine  upon  the  universe. 

But  the  conception  has  no  need  to  suppose  such 
a  thing  as  novelty  in  kind.  All  the  sorts  of  being  that 
reality  presents  may  well  be  eternally  present  in 
God’s  life  and  consciousness.  The  analogy  most 
natural  to  the  case  is  not  in  terms  of  the  growing 
child  who,  starting  from  a  vague  and  almost  con¬ 
tentless  experience,  progressively  discovers  more  and 
more  about  himself  and  the  surrounding  world,  but 
rather  of  the  full-grown  man  who  in  the  life  of 
social  experience  creates  new  values  on  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  what  may  be  a  relative  fixity  of  knowledge 
and  character,  through  the  changing  conditions  of 
his  intercourse  with  his  fellows.  That,  given  the 
presence  of  value  as  an  aspect  of  the  world,  the  ex¬ 
panding  life  of  conscious  beings  in  relation  to  com¬ 
mon  ends  should  be  the  possible  source  of  a  constant 
renewal  of  satisfaction  in  changing  forms,  is  not 
only  what  experience  tells  us  does  actually  take 
place,  but  it  seems  a  very  natural  sort  of  thing,  espe¬ 
cially  since  without  it  an  overwhelming  monotony 
would  apparently  invade  the  spiritual  life. 

And  I  see  no  reason  to  deny  to  God  the  same  pro¬ 
gressive  enjoyment  of  changing  values  which  is 
needed  to  constitute  value  itself  in  the  long  run. 
This  no  doubt  involves  with  each  new  step  a  growth 
in  knowledge  also.  But  it  is  a  knowledge  not  about 
new  kinds  of  existents,  but,  primarily,  about  the 
possible  relationships  that  present  existences  in- 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  177 

volve.  And  there  seems  to  be  no  necessity  that  all 
such  possibilities  should  at  any  moment  anywhere 
be  actual  even  for  God,  or  that  God  should  be  any 
less  divine  through  his  failure  to  include  them  in  his 
conscious  life.  In  fact  the  disadvantage  is  on  the 
other  side.  Thus  it  has  often  been  felt  as  a  real  ob¬ 
jection,  from  the  ethical  and  aesthetic  sides  at  least, 
to  an  absolutist  philosophy,  that  it  supposes  all  pos¬ 
sible  relationships — the  trivial  and  silly  as  well  as 
the  significant,  the  unpleasant  and  ignoble  as  well 
as  the  noble — eternally  present  in  the  divine  mind; 
to  say  nothing  of  the  intolerable  sense  of  infinite 
complexity  and  confusion  which  this  carries  for 
human  thinking. 

Granting,  then,  a  community  of  selves  already  in 
existence,  the  interplay  of  their  lives  might  supply, 
it  would  seem,  a  fund  of  novelty  not  especially  hard 
for  the  mind  to  acquiesce  in.  Meanwhile  the  emer¬ 
gence  of  the  members  of  this  community  themselves 
brings  us  back  to  an  acuter  form  of  the  difficulty. 
But  if  we  take  the  self  in  its  empirical  form  at  least, 
we  have  to  offset  the  impossibility  of  understanding 
the  rationale  of  its  appearance  by  the  undoubted 
fact  that  it  does  appear,  and  appear  as  something 
new.  We  can  call  it  non-temporal ;  but  this  is  a  form 
of  words  only,  and  to  it  no  more  attaches  in  the 
way  of  a  realizable  meaning  than  to  the  notion  of 
creation.  Each  new  emergence  of  a  conscious  life 
has  every  appearance  of  being  an  actual  accretion  to 
the  sum  of  things,  which  was  not  there  before;  and 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


17 8 

in  the  absence  of  a  competing  explanation  that 
really  explains,  I  do  not  find  it  unreasonable  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  this  represents  the  way  the  world  is  made. 

And  furthermore,  if  we  could  safely  trust  a  con¬ 
clusion  already  drawn  in  the  preceding  section,  it 
might  even  be  possible  to  add  a  logical  justification 
of  this  attitude.  The  difficulty  we  feel  here  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  we  find  ourselves  asking  how  a 
human  self  is  brought  about,  or  “created”;  and  this 
supposes  that  a  relation  of  causality  is  really  pres¬ 
ent,  though  we  cannot  get  an  understanding  of  its 
nature.  The  only  meaning  I  have  been  able  to  assign 
however  to  effective  causality,  is  in  terms  of  con¬ 
scious  motive ;  and  the  particular  aspect  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  now  in  question  is  apparently  not  such  as  to 
make  applicable  the  explanation  previously  at¬ 
tempted.  For  here  we  have  by  hypothesis  two  sepa¬ 
rate  existents,  God  and  man,  one  of  them  supposed 
to  be  “caused”  by  the  other;  and  this  would  involve 
just  that  notion  of  a  subsistent  being  for  the  causal 
relation,  falling  somehow  “between”  existents,  upon 
which  the  argument  of  the  section  was  intended  to 
throw  doubt.  On  the  showing  of  this  argument,  the 
question  as  to  how  selves  can  be  created  would  be 
met,  not  by  confessing  our  inability  to  frame  an  an¬ 
swer,  but  by  a  recognition  that  the  question  is  one 
that  ought  not  to  be  asked,  since  it  makes  use  of  a 
category  which  by  definition  is  irrelevant  to  the  par¬ 
ticular  situation  we  are  dealing  with. 

What  in  other  words  this  amounts  to  is,  that  there 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  179 

are  certain  circumstances  where  the  acceptance  of 
the  fact  itself  as  its  own  explanation  is  our  only  re¬ 
course,  without  asking  how  or  why.  This  attitude 
philosophers  agree  is  in  one  case  at  least  the  only 
proper  one ;  it  is  meaningless  to  ask  how  the  universe 
itself  is  made.  And  I  see  no  conclusive  objection  to 
supposing  that,  except  for  mental  habits  that  inter¬ 
fere,  there  might  be  occasions  where  the  attitude  was 
justified  in  connection  with  particular  portions  of 
the  world  as  well.  What  I  should  take  to  be  a  case 
in  point  is  the  fundamental  fact  of  causality  itself, 
in  the  humanistic  sense  in  which  I  have  attempted 
to  define  it.  Purposive  activity  within  experience, 
with  its  links  of  intelligible  connection,  we  in  a  real 
measure  understand;  we  know  just  what  it  is,  be¬ 
cause  we  live  through  it  many  times  a  day.  Yes,  it 
may  be  rejoined;  but  we  do  not  know  how  such  a 
process  works,  in  terms  of  its  causal  machinery,  and 
so  we  do  not  really  understand  it  after  all.  But  why 
is  not  a  “what”  enough4?  Since  we  know  also  that 
it  is,  why  should  not  its  peculiar  nature  be  accepted 
as  in  so  far  a  final  revelation  of  the  nature  of  reality 
itself,  without  going  on  to  ask  another  why,  espe¬ 
cially  since  this  “why”  has  been  allowed  by  most 
philosophers  to  have  no  meaning  except  in  terms  of 
a  further  “that”?  And  just  as  we  may  be  held  to 
have  no  right  to  ask  for  the  causal  explanation  of 
an  experience  which  by  definition  stands  for  the  very 
meaning  of  causality,  so  we  would  appear  similarly 
to  have  no  right  to  ask  for  a  causal  explanation  in 


i8o 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH? 


the  case  of  any  actual  collocations  in  the  world  of 
fact  where  the  definition  we  have  accepted  cannot 
be  made  to  apply ;  we  must  take  these  for  what  they 
are,  as  among  the  ultimate  data  through  which  we 
discover  what  the  universe  is  like.  Meanwhile  I 
should  not  like  to  be  understood  as  resting  too 
heavily  on  such  a  dialectical  consideration;  for  I 
cannot  deny  that  our  natural  propensity  to  demand 
a  causal  “why”  here  is  very  strong. 

To  the  more  general  question  involved  in  a  theory 
of  time,  I  have  nothing  to  add  to  what  has  been  al¬ 
ready  said.  The  acceptance  of  the  temporal  charac¬ 
ter  of  reality  seems  to  me  necessary  not  only  to  save 
human  values,  but  speculatively  necessary  also  if 
we  are  to  find  for  our  words  about  the  nature  of  the 
concrete  world  a  definite  and  intelligible  meaning. 
The  moment  I  try  to  reduce  time  to  a  logical  cate¬ 
gory  in  an  eternal  and  unchanging  universe,  that 
moment  I  am  forced  to  abandon  outright  my  every¬ 
day  descriptions;  and  since  I  am  not  recompensed 
for  the  loss  by  an  increase  of  intelligibility,  I  hesi¬ 
tate  to  make  the  exchange.  Meanwhile  I  may  repeat 
that,  when  I  speak  of  the  infinity  of  time,  I  am  not 
inclined  to  regard  time  as  an  entity  or  receptacle. 
I  mean  simply  that  there  exist  no  limits  to  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  new  experience.  I  confess  however  that 
this  as  a  reply  to  difficulties  is  much  more  relevant 
to  the  future  than  to  the  past.  God’s  consciousness 
of  what  is  still  to  come  may  be,  I  think,  as  ours  is, 
no  consciousness  of  an  actual  eternity,  but  only  of 


SOME  METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  181 


an  absence  of  finality  in  any  values  at  any  time 
achieved.  But  I  do  not  know  how  this  could  be  ap¬ 
plied  to  God’s  awareness  of  the  past,  since  here 
human  experience  does  not  help  us  out.  We  are  able 
to  look  back  on  a  beginning.  But  God  cannot  think 
a  time  when  he  was  not,  and  still  be  God;  and  how 
he  could  combine  a  present  realization  of  his  full 
nature  with  an  endless  past,  I  am  unable  to  imagine 
any  way  of  conceiving. 

One  objection  still  remains  to  the  hypothesis 
which  I  have  been  considering — perhaps  on  the 
whole  the  most  serious  of  all.  Even  apart  from  the 
insistent  facts  of  suffering  and  evil,  the  world  of 
nature  in  the  concrete  presents  to  our  natural  mind 
a  brute  and  non-moral  character  which  we  shall 
probably  hesitate  to  connect  too  closely  with  the 
notion  of  God  in  its  religious  meaning.  I  think  in¬ 
deed  that  the  feeling  of  positive  repugnance  here 
may  be  exaggerated,  and  often  is  exaggerated;  a 
part  of  the  current  indictment  against  the  cruelty 
of  nature  reveals  a  bias  of  prejudice  that  is  no  more 
to  be  applauded  than  a  similar  prejudice  on  the 
other  side.  I  shall  however  not  attempt  to  meet  the 
issue,  partly  because  the  problem  of  evil  is  too  large 
to  manage  in  this  connection,  and  in  part  because  I 
am  distrustful  of  the  amount  of  success  I  should 


attain. 


INDEX 


Absolutism,  173,  175,  177. 

Agnosticism,  101,  121, 

165  f. 

Alexander,  S.,  124. 

Analysis,  25  If. 

Animism,  88  f. 

Awareness,  103  ff. 

Axioms,  38  ff. 

Bain,  Alexander,  49  f. 

Belief,  2  f. ;  sources  of, 
7  ff. ;  definition  of,  45  ff. 

Causation,  15,  115,  142  ff., 
178  ff. 

Certainty,  4,  8,  12,  14,  23, 
29  ff.,  47,  161  f. 

Coherence,  1 1  ff.,  32. 

Common  sense,  24  ff . 

Concrete  universal,  106  ff. 

Consciousness,  56,  79  f., 

82  f.,  101  ff. 

Contradiction,  113,  116  ff. 

Correspondence  theory,  68  f., 
70  ff. 

Creation,  178  ff. 

Criterion  of  truth.  See 
Truth. 

Descartes,  28,  33,  102. 

Difference,  139  ff.,  lyy. 


Dualism,  100  ff. 

Emotion  and  belief,  10, 
15  ff.,  24. 

Error,  60,  68,  123  ff. 

Essences,  57  f.,  61  ff.,  105. 
See  Ideas  and  Meanings. 

Evil,  181. 

Existence,  46,  60,  77  ff. 

Experience,  106. 

Extensity,  145  ff. 

External  world,  belief  in, 
9  f.,  59  ff .,  65  f. 

Geometry,  40. 

God,  argument  from  es¬ 
sences,  163  ff.;  relation  to 
man,  I70f.,  177  ff.;  na¬ 
ture  of,  171  ff.;  as  finite, 
172  ff.;  as  temporal, 
174 

Hegel,  1 12  ff. 

Hodgson,  S.,  92. 

Idealism,  60,  103,  106  ff., 
124,  125. 

Ideas,  57  f.  See  Essences  and 
Meanings. 

Identity,  136  f. 

Images,  57  f.,  71  ff. 


184 


INDEX 


Immortality,  21  f. 

Inference,  134  ff. 

Infinity,  155  ff. 

Intuition,  7  f.,  31  f.,  34  ff. 

Knowledge,  4,  124;  descrip¬ 
tion  of,  33,  56  ff. ;  of 
other  selves,  87  ff. ;  of  the 
past,  92  ff. 

Logic,  132  ff. 

Matter,  163  ff. 

Meanings,  69  ff.,  128.  See 
Essences  and  Ideas. 

Memory,  92  ff. 

Mental  activity,  58,  85  f., 
103  f. 

Mill,  James,  99. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  40. 

Naturalism,  24. 

Necessity,  12,  29  ff.,  38. 

Neo-realism,  60  ff.,  62,  82, 
86,  103  f.,  122  ff.,  129, 
132,  160. 

Non-existence,  62. 

Number,  151  ff.,  155  f. 

Objects,  67,  80  f.,  103. 

Perception,  59  ff. 

Pragmatism,  103,  124. 


Purpose,  138  f. 

Quantity,  151  ff. 

Reason,  23. 

Relations,  74,  128  ff. 
Representative  theory  of 
knowledge.  See  Dualism. 
Royce,  106,  116. 

Santayana,  G.,  88. 
Scepticism,  9,  16,  26,  162. 
Self,  the,  97  f.,  167  ff. 
Self-evidence,  12,  32  ff. 
Sensation,  61,  64  f.,  77, 

I47  f; 

Similarity,  152. 

Soul,  169. 

Space,  145  ff.,  156  f. 

Spencer,  165. 

Subsistence,  128  ff. 
Substance,  170. 

Time,  94,  108  f.,  157  f., 

180. 

Trueness,  55. 

Truth,  definition  of,  1  ff.,  8, 
1  1,  35,  55  ff. ;  criterion  of, 
3,  7,  11  ff. 

Universals, 

131  ff. 


126  f.,  130, 


PRINTED  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


Date  Due 


•  "‘wwsarw*'  l 

L  M 

i 

m  & 

"iriO  jj 

WT 

lUUi 

1  ■ 

<  ay  m  r*t 

SEi  Jp 

% 

PRINTED 

IN  U.  S.  A. 

